These Demented Lands (14 page)

When we'd done our little dance, saying, ‘Time for medicine,' Aircrash Investigator moved towards Macbeth, far across the dance floor.

I knew the way people's eyes jumped a little looking at it, my moustache moved funny when I did the talking. ‘What's with the music?' I says to Cormorant who we'd all known of once, on account of his always playing in bands.

‘It's Brotherhood's.'

I kneeled and flicked through the every one of Dylan's albums.

‘Fancy some hash?' Cormorant says.

‘Nah,' I went.

‘You're cute, even as a guy; how about it?'

‘Get lost.'

‘Is that your husband?'

‘Nut.'

Cormorant nodded, the light swishing on his forehead. Then, saddest of everything, he played Sign on the Window; we looked a long time then, ever so gingerly, smiled at the beautiful sadness.

Brotherhood strode up with more drag couples. He was chortling but I saw through the smile how he was spying on me and the Investigator for as to what was up. Brotherhood walked to me and tapped his breasts upwards with the palms of his hands, ‘I'm unpacking'.

The Aircrash Investigator stepped over as I rose from the box of records with Permitted Tracks on them.

‘I wish you were a man. I'd ask you to dance,' says Aircrash Investigator to Brotherhood.

‘Oh we can double up: I'm
very
open-minded.'

‘You look lovely,' I says, so they two wouldn't maybe fight.

‘How about a kiss, Mister?' asked Brotherhood.

‘I don't want lipstick on my collar,' I goes.

Both men, in their women-clothes, laughed. I leaned to Brotherhood's earring and whispered, ‘I'm not afraid of you.'

‘Mmm,' he went, thoughtfully.

DJ Cormorant shouted, ‘Hey Mister Bro'hood, Mr Bro'hood Dude, this stuff is sharp, lyrically I'm talking about, but I could really fuck everyone up if I mixed in a few breakbeats. I mean, these fiddles, they're
depressing
man – the fiddle's unsexy, like the trombone.'

Without looking over at the DJ, Brotherhood says, ‘Just you play what I told you – and whatever, save I'll Be Your Baby Tonight until last; here . . .'

Brotherhood grabbed the microphone.

‘Ladies and Gentlemen – or should I say Gentlemen and Ladies – I, and all of us here at Drome Hotel, thank you for joining in so spiritedly. Chilli and rice is being served by Nurse Macbeth, with beer to keep everything from getting too steamy. A contest for the beau and belle of the ball will be held later but meanwhile will you all please take the floor for a waltz.'

‘Get it
on
, man,' Brotherhood hissed.

DJ Cormorant started spinning the song: a lolloping, weird waltz with fiddles and harmonicas called Isis.

The couples started grabbing each other's drag-dressed wives and husbands. Suddenly, Brotherhood lifted my hands then waltzed me out into the middle of the floor. He waltzed dead well, while he mouthed the lyrics of Isis at my face as if he was trying to communicate something. As I listened to the words I learned I could make Brotherhood my victim.

The One Who . . . etc . . . The Debris Man, looked toward us. Watching him over Brotherhood's velvet shoulder I saw him hitch up the bosom then begin to cross towards Macbeth who saw his advance and looked down, worried, at the beer he was pouring. Straight away The Debris Man was round and dragging Macbeth onto the dance-floor. In his nurse uniform, Chef Macbeth tried to laugh it off but yous could tell the amount furiousness he had, all pent up in him. Yous could tell the Aircrasher was getting his own back as he squeezed their big breasts to each other and made Macbeth circle much faster than normal in an over-the-top waltz. The Aircrasher stopped and spun Macbeth round with his legs rising off the ground helplessly. The nurse's skirt rumpled up, giving the sickening sight of the chef's splotchy legs gripped in fishnet stockings.

Other drag-couples waltzed, cheered and showed the gumption enough to stand aside as Macbeth turned all the faster then was suddenly flung aside, hit the wood tiles and rolled the once. Macbeth straight-away shot up on his feet but one of his high heels buckled under him and he sat down.

Brotherhood had to stop the dancing with me cause of his hysterics, he was rubbing his make-up into a complete soup. Another waltz called Winterlude started, so I crossed to Aircrasher who was at the tap himself, serving beer under frowns from Mrs Heapie, her monkey wrench at hand as she served out dollops of ferocious chilli con came with rice.

Brotherhood helped Macbeth to his feet, shouted at him and tottered over, his wig knocked to one side.

Houlihan, Man Who Walked the Skylines – whatever – with his Irishish name, passed a paper plate of chilli speared
with plastic fork. ‘Get that down the middle of your neck,' he goes.

I took one taste and got pins and needles in my face. ‘Jesus,' I says, reached out and took a hold of his big pint for a wolfing of a few gulps.

We waltzed again, hand on his smooth shiny shoulder, his bare arms around the material of his own suit.

‘The ghost,' he whispered.

‘We saw it,' I nodded.

‘Together,' he goes.

DJ Cormorant put a boogie-ish number on: Down Along the Cove. Crazy Brotherhood, owner of the whole sheboogle, led in a hokey-kokey; a lot of chests and asses got put in, taken out and shaken all about: more than some busts could be expected to endure, and there was a rash of collapsications and shifting bra adjustings. Then Brotherhood was organising and led a conga line – even us and DJ Cormorant having to do the joining in as we wove out the dining-room doors and off up and down the corridor, lighting the rooflights first-time-ever all the ways down. The length of the line came, twisting a bit clumsy-like, out of rhythm up the spiral staircase, round the Observation Lounge: some of the rear-line figures holding beer bottles they'd swiped, passing the bar, those tanning the bottles and eventually dropping them on the dining-room floor where feet went on kicking and spinning them round on the shiny dancing tiles.

Brotherhood, me and the man stood beside the DJ Cormorant's desk, Brotherhood's fake jewels sparkling.

‘You're really getting into your parts, guys,' DJ Cormorant nodded.

The Aircrash Investigator goes, ‘Hey, son, your baseball cap's on the wrong way round.'

‘Ho ho. Bro'hood, Sir. What we were talking about: the mainer. Big one after Christmas to bring in all the piller kiddies. Perfect pitch down on the airfield.'

‘What's this?' I goes.

‘Repetitive beats from amplified systems. That's where the money is at the end of
this
century. You guys make the misery, you guys may as well muscle in on the escapism from it.'

‘I'm thinking of expanding. Drugs.' Brotherhood nodded firmly.

‘Not just drugs, Mr Bro'hood, the entire holistic escapist theme park right here at Drome Hotel and its environs. I can engineer it for you.'

‘How does that sound to you, children?' Brotherhood smiled and placed a hand on our shoulders. He added, ‘I'll handle security.'

A lump chilli con came flew through the air, splattered on some man's hairy, bare back, just below the effulgence of his imitation diamond clasp.

DJ leaned forward to try protect the decks as more blobs of chilli came slowly arcing, sailing across close to the ceiling. A stray lump, thrown by some man in an imitation fur coat, soared over and hit a stumbling girl wearing a false beard that seemed of cotton wool.

Crouched by the DJ's desks I saw it all: the young wife
who'd lent me Aircrasher's dress – and the Rimmel stuff – marched forward, cradling a huge kitchen pot, her brand new husband in the blue dress (darkened on the thigh by direct hits) at her side. She clawed fists into the pot and flung bracelets of chilli ahead. Men? women? roared and men screamed as blood-red gashes of chilli opened up, glossy on the lacy clothes and pale faces – surely both those men felt at home in this feast of wet wounds? A spatter caught the Aircrash Investigator on his smooth bare chest just above cleavage. He stepped forward and heaved the pot away from the dressed-as-a-golfer-girl, plunged his hand and ground a load into the girl's face who screamed. The husband slammed a gateau into the Aircrasher's face. That halted him for a tick as his eyes opened up through synthetic cream then Aircrasher lifted the pot and tipped the full load over the husband who tried to dodge but, in his high heels, couldn't move sharply enough – a huge glut of chilli sauce slid down his bare back and brushed the sticking-out-arse as it plopped to the floor, a high heel jerked out to one side leaving a clear strip of wood flooring: the guy was down as Aircrash Investigator stepped over him dropping the pot with a clang.

Chilli and gateau were flying everywhere. ‘Follow me, stick by my side,' called the Investigator. A handful of chilli hit my face and my eye began to sting like fury but with the other I saw enough to weed my way through all – towards Brotherhood who leaned, tossing out plates of chilli, wig awry, like some terrible aircrash victim, blood-thick sauce strewn down him like mutilation. Aircrash Investigator punched with all his weight and caught Brotherhood below
the eye. I winced as the wig flew off, pale powdered face highlighted under still-sandy hair. Brotherhood landed on his arse, legs out, wet hairs twisted and compressed under the revolting stockings. The Aircrasher's face slapped aside by a hit of chilli.

The room had divided into two camps: one sheltering behind the buffet tables, the other salvaging and returning dollops of chilli from the wailing DJ's desk. I was caught in the crossfire of No Man's Land.

‘Follow me,' the Aircrash Investigator says.

We both dropped to our knees. Casualties, drunk – and a couple not officially man and wife, together snogging, lay among the red puddles of sauce.

As the Aircrasher, Warmer, One Who Walked Skylines . . . Monsieur Debris . . . all the names he used on me then . . . as he took my hand and we crawled together out of that dining room, DJ Cormorant jumped up and down, clapping gallantly: the sound system began blasting I'll Be Your Baby Tonight.

WHAT MUST HAVE
happened back in my room is: I said to her, ‘If you take off your shoes and socks, I'll be able to see you're the same as me.'

She stood in my ruined last suit, reached up to remove a kidney-bean skin from her neck. I looked at the speckles of nail varnish on the ends of the fingers. I said, ‘At first I thought it was because you had lost everything when the wee ferry sunk, then I realised you wouldn't put up with Brotherhood's humiliations, the clothes he bought you, unless, well unless you were broke. I lay awake trying to imagine why you put up with it till I realised you had no choice. This is why, if you take off your shoes and socks I think we'll see you've put nail varnish on your toes; you haven't put it on your fingers because that would be too obvious, the nail varnish of these young wives is the first make-up you could get hold off since you got here.

I took out my bra and padding.

She nodded and sat on the end of the bed.

Finally she said, ‘Do you think he'll get the police?'

I laughed, looked at her.

‘Ahm, I've to get a shower,' she shrugged, stood. ‘It was wrong to hit him. It was . . . Mmm. Too early. He'll chuck you out. Then I'll be alone here. Though there is a one up on the hill above who's keeping watch on us, he might let you stay in his tent. There again, he might not.'

‘He won't.' I thought of the Devil's Advocate, lying now in the darkness, on the elevated horizontal larch, the same one Carlton died across; the Devil's Advocate would lie surrounded by the amphibious blacks of moon-glazed puddles in the slap-wet lands, glaring up at warbles of starlight; the rifle or semi-automatic, or verge cutter recently sharpened by the travelling Knifegrinder, clawed to his fat chest, sloping downwards so blade or muzzle rests beneath his chin as he waits, bides his time to stir from his lair and come down into the enclosures around the hotel.

AT NINE O'CLOCK
in the morning I heard the brass bell on the reception desk ring down in the foyer below. The farce of her departure had begun and the dusty irritation of the unused bell was a great touch on her part, anything to deepen the claws in the flesh of the morning; anything that allowed us to use the props and stage scenery around us, in this folly of plaster and wood panelling on subsiding muck.

Brotherhood with a blue and yellow black eye was behind the bar, serving bacon rolls to the hardier of the honeymoon couples, but as he calmly folded the dish-towel and gave me a challenging glance, he also noted the witnesses around him. I was on my feet before he rounded the bar.

‘Morning,' I said, halfway down the spiral staircase, then I crossed to the neglected pot of ivy where I leaned with the bright sun behind me.

The girl stood at the desk with the kitbag leaning against her leg. I reached up and chipped at something caught in the curves of my left ear: a little piece of dried, almost black, chilli sauce came away. (When I'd showered the night before, half kidney beans lay in the plughole.)

Brotherhood walked round, behind her then took up position at the desk. The air radio burbled with the frequency of some high airliner heading across the Atlantic, miles above us.

‘Checking out?' he squeaked, so cheerily his bruised face must have hurt him.

The girl moved her head the once.

‘Now, room 15.' Brotherhood produced the thin paper chit I would look at in the afternoon with the numerals £665 written at the bottom.

‘I have no money,' said the young woman.

‘Pardon?' Brotherhood rolled his eyes and smiled.

For the benefit of the now-attentive, newly married and supposedly self-absorbed ears above, the girl repeated, ‘I have no money; around seventeen pence down in the lining of my old jacket.'