weeknighters chapter 7 (1999)

Merrie Themepark England

She arrives at Haveton Castle as the grounds are closing. A coach lumbers out of the car park, old ladies peering out of its windows. Tired families return to their hot cars and prepare themselves for the drive home after their day in the countryside.
It's a Monday so there aren't as many families and fogies here as there are at the weekends. However, it has been quite a busy day. It's early summer and many families that can't afford to go abroad this holidays have opted for the exotic Welsh Borders, descending on unsuspecting friends and family or filling holiday cottages.
It has been a busy day all right. The boy really didn't feel like playing the chirpy guide to the usual array of doddery old American and Australian tourists, grumpy children and their akward parents.
But now Nick's afternoon's work is done. He leans against the entrance sign and enjoys the cigarette he was looking forward to throughout his last tour. He watches the grey Golden Virginia clouds disappear towards the treetops and chats to Daniel, who's waiting for his Mum to pick him up. A first year student of Conservation at the local agricultural college, Daniel differs from Nick in valuing this job as a positive career move. He's a pleasant bloke, but not someone who Nick would bother spending much time with outside Haveton. A classic workmate.
Nick is distracted from the tale of Daniel's weekend by wondering whether Rose will show up. Then he spies her approaching on the woodchip footpath. His admiration of the slight swing of her slender hips is interrupted by Daniel poking him in the ribs. He mentioned to Daniel earlier that he was hoping for a visit, so now the cheeky scamp is poking him and whispering, "Is this her? Is this the bird Nick? She's all right, I wouldn't mind..."
Nick is disgusted by Daniel's casual objectification of Rose. It must be love. He snaps at the lairy teenager.
"Yes Daniel! I mean, ah, yeah, this is the girl." He realises he was a little short with the bloke, who was only being bloke, and his attempt to smooth over this hasn't made the situation any less akward. Time to beat a retreat. Rose reaches them and he takes her by the arm, bids Daniel a hasty farewell and promptly departs.
They wander through the grounds of Haveton Castle and Follies, decreed the county's most interesting area by the English Folly Society. However, they don't stop in the entrance block to read the Folly Society's presentation about its brilliant restoration work here. They don't stop to buy a picnic hamper in the cafe or three key-rings and a poop-scoop in the giftshop. It looks mobbed in there with children spending their pocket money on well-earned refreshments and souveniers.
Rose doesn't stop to watch the safety video or pick up a complimentary guide, which is naughty because all visitors are required to do so before entering the park. As registered English Folly Society guide number 194HAV, Nick should know better, but he decides he can make an exception just this once. This means Rose doesn't know they're on the red (ruins) trail, as oppossed to yellow (hilltop), green (gorge) or blue (lake). She also doesn't know that the first glade they enter after the entrance block was designed and planted by Nathaniel Dutton, chief gardner to the ninth Lord Haveton, Sir Joshua Paincastle. This means she is able to just enjoy the green grass, lush foliage and clear views.
Anyway, you don't need a guide book to understand Haveton Castle and Follies. This place is an eighteenth century themepark. It was landscaped in the picturesque style, which was a reaction against the traditionally neat, formal gardens of country houses. However, the seemingly natural, organic picturesque was as contrived as any of the formal tradition's straight lines of hedges or symmetrically arranged trees. The picturesque was designed to look natural. The trees were planted to look like they had just grown that way. Eccentric natural features and buildings were also part of this aesthetic, so caves were hollowed out, craggy precipices sculpted and ruins built. These follies in this setting were a themepark for the eighteenth century aristocracy. They would stroll around pretending they were wood imps in some pastoral story or painting. Guests of Joshua Paincastle at Haveton Manor could visit the hermit, a man employed to live in one of the man-made caves. This park was a Disneyland of the simple age before they discovered the fun to be had in sexual repression and genocide in the Victorian era.
An interesting historical addendum is the historian Peter Gullib's recent discovery here of what he claims is the Holy Grail. The historical investigator believes the Grail to be a very real artefact which was hidden at Haveton for hundreds of years. He believes it arrived in Britain after a blind monk smuggled it out of Rome in the last days of the Empire. During the Dark Ages the Grail was kept nearby by the tribe of a Welsh warlord called Errol Blegadoon, who Gullib believes was the real King Arthur. In the late 12th century his descendent Percival Warren was gifted Haveton Castle by King Richard the Lionheart. However, Richard's brother John had a grudge against Warren, and after his coronation in 1199 evicted Warren from the castle. Warren became a dissident nobleman, ambushing royal convoys in the forests of the Welsh Marches. This descendent of King Arthur was, believes Gullib, the real Robin Hood, and he hid the Holy Grail here. Gullib is the controversial author of bestsellers like Hitler & Churchill: Secret Alliance and JFK: the 10th Man Theory.
Regardless of the validity of these claims, they tie in nicely with the picturesque and are a good tourist attraction. Since Gullib's connection of Haveton to King Arthur and Robin Hood, the grounds have seen the addition of many new features. While some visitors from the Sherwood Forest area have had mixed feelings about Robin's Secret Dell and the Friar Tuck-In Cafe, surveys have found Arthur's Walk, the Sword in the Store giftshop and Merlin's Caverns to be a great success.
The Folly Society have turned Haveton into a themepark for the twentieth century. This place is now the Alton Towers for people who want a quiet day out. People flock here in coach-loads to enjoy a quiet day out, to seek serenity between encountering elderly Australian couples and running from the shrieks and pattering feet of children. Meanwhile, you must try to stay on the right route or you might get lost. You could end up on the blue trail instead of the red! Or the yellow instead of the green! But it's all right, there are lots of signposts.
There are signs everywhere, signs to lead visitors like children in this new themepark world. Signs bearing reassuring messages like Way Back, or Yellow Trail: Alternative Route: Avoiding White Rock and Gorge Bridge, or Warning: 100 Ft. Cliff: Danger of Death. The Folly Society seem obssessed with labels. Every monument is preceeded by a sign. Visitors know they are about to come across, say, the Roman Baths or Arthur's Walk because of the signs that litter the sides of the paths. This removes the element of surprise. The Folly Society tell people where to go and what to expect. There leave nothing to the imagination. If you spot a little cave and step into it pretending you are some questing medieval knight or strolling Elizabethan gentleman, you will soon be dragged back to the present day themepark when you see the sign that calls this place Shepherd's Shelter, or Paincastle's Hideaway, or Hermit's Retreat. Of course, most of these twee names are as arbitrary as any you might have dreamed up, but we must respect them because the Folly Society devised them and this is their themepark and we're in their world.
Nick has often thought about this. He remembers this place when it was deserted, before it was taken on by the Folly Society, and he sometimes thinks his employers' ruthless organisation of the park has destroyed its atmosphere. But he realises he's probably bitter about it because he works here.
Either way, he's glad Rose doesn't have a guide leaflet and isn't paying any attention to the signs. She doesn't have to worry because she has her own personal guide. However, he is less interested in describing the picturesque than explaining away the madness at the races. He decides to give her the abridged history of Haveton.
"This place was basically an eighteenth century Disneyland, with nice views instead of Mickey Mouse. Oh yeah, and the Holy Grail is meant to've been hidden here. Well, some wacky historian found a cup here and he claims it's the Holy Grail. He's done a load of research and he's even written a book about it which is on sale in the giftshop. Only problem is, I remember sneaking in and getting pissed in the Hermit's Retreat with Jez and a couple of... people about five years ago when I was in the sixth form, and I'm sure we left a little cup in there."
He broaches the subject of the races and is encouraged by her response.
"Sorry if I seemed cold at the end. I was just abit phased by your freaky mates, but I had a good laugh about it once you'd gone."
They ascend the footpath under the overhanging leaves of Sycamore trees. Light falls on their faces in shimmering green patches.
"I'm glad someone found it amusing," he laughs. "I experienced a sense of humour failure later. We somehow managed to get out of there unscathed, though Jez and his psycho mate leering out of the car windows didn't exactly help, and we stopped at The Bloody Fox on the way home. I was up for a pint. As I'm sure you can appreciate, I needed a drink."
Dark green signs with white lettering and white borders provide the names of follies and natural features. Signs pertaining to the coloured trails bear the colour of the relevant route.
"We were supposedly having a swiftie on the way home. I figured I could manage one and just about be able to see the road to drive back. But after about an hour I realised they were taking the piss. They'd sneakily had a few pints each to my one. Then Ronin started yelling at everyone, calling them Huns. I think it was some Irish republican thing. No one really knew what he was talking about in a pub in rural England, but he was still doing their heads in."
"He was a strange boy. He reminded me of Wurzel before he became a recluse. Where did you find him?"
"Where did Jez find him. He claims he's an optician. He says he somehow scraped through his university course but he's basically self-taught. I'm not sure if I believe him, or if I want to. He lives in Cheltenham. He went there for the Gold Cup one year and just stayed on."
A group of children run past, heading downhill to the Sword in the Store and the Friar Tuck-In. They are much more comfortable in this strange themepark reality than their old fashioned parents will ever be. This is just another assault course for them, like those around the cages at the zoo, the tanks at the aquarium, the jewels in the Tower of London. A nearby church bell starts clanging and a little girl at the front of the gang quips, "That's King Arthur ringing his bell!"
Her minions laugh and they disappear round a corner.
"They've got the right idea," pants Rose. "This is getting quite steep. Where are we going?"
"You'll find out... at the top of this fifty fifty slope."
"Tell me you bastard, or I'm not going any further!"
"All right, we're going up to the castle ruins. God Rose, you should know that. We are on the red (ruins) route. Anyway, they're the best thing here and you get good views up there. It's worth the climb, honest."
He laughs and turns his eyes away fom her to look uphill. Then he looks at the ground and concentrates on the climb. Silence between them. The wind blows around the trees. The leaves strain and swirl in the cold currents of air. Suddenly, the whistling wind is quietened by some invisible elemental change. The trees are still and watchful again. All that can be heard is the swish of the humans' weary limbs moving up the path. The slow sigh of their breathing. Swish and sigh. As they inhale.
And exhale.
Inhale.
And Nick needs a fag when they reach the top. They catch their breath and wander across the top of the hill. The side they walked up is quite overgrown. Trees overshadow the path. Brambles lick at their feet. The other side of the hill is much barer. As they progress towards it, trees thin. The path becomes wider, the terrain more open. They start to glimpse the view for which they slogged uphill. They sense a golden glow beyond the dark tree trunks. Then they reach the open side of the hill and are greeted by a view into the evening. Hazy yellow light filters through clouds that drift over a ramshackle valley. The valley rolls towards a range of hills. As the terrain climbs towards the ridges of the humpback hills, the windswept grass and grazing sheep are gradually replaced by rough patches of bracken and gorse. Rocks begin to rear out of the soil, grey tears in the mellow landscape. A few black and white farmhouses and stone cottages are scattered around this secret Eden, their windows shining pink with reflected light.
There used to be a sign here saying Lovers' View until Nick ripped it out of the ground and threw it in a hedge.
Rose points at one of the tumbledown cottages and says, "That looks like Bingo's place."
"Yeah, it does but it's not," replies Nick, keen to dispel her thoughts of her ex. "Here, I'll give you my patter about the castle. I know you're dying to hear it," he says sarcastically, then begins his didactic speel.
"And now the tour continues into the ruins of Haveton Castle. These are the ruins of the original castle, which was destroyed in about 1200 during Percival Warren's feud with King John. Haveton Manor was built four centuries later and still stands at the east end of the estate. It is owned by a mysterious foreign gentleman.
"There are many myths about the castle. Not only was it the home of Percival warren, the real Robin Hood, before he took to the surrounding forests, but King Arthur himself is said to have had his last stand here. Legend has it that Merlin laid his body in a cavern deep inside the hill. And there is a special atmosphere to these ruins."
They follow the woodchip path towards the castle. Even before they reach the main section of the ruins they see pieces of the ancient structure. Stumps of wall. Dark shapes in the undergrowth. Grey lines, traces of wall where the building has been reduced to its foundations by medieval siege weapons and centuries of decay.
The woodchip leads them past these fragments of history. It was a small castle, and they are soon standing in front of the main ruins, those of the west, north and south walls. There is still the feeling here of being inside the thick stone walls of a castle keep. The evening sun is hidden by the west wall, streaming through windows and slits through which Norman lords must have looked to check on the pesky Welsh. Dust particles and the occassional lazy insect shimmer in the fat light beams that spill through the windows and creep over the top of the dark walls. The golden rays illuminate patches of the shadowy, rubble-strewn ground.
"We must be standing in the, what was it called, the Great Hall, where they had their feasts and bards and stuff," whispers Rose, somehow reverent of this relic from another age.
"No, this would've been the servants and the garrison's quarters. The Great Hall was on the first floor," corrects the guide.
They look up at the old walls. Half way up is a ledge, a suggestion that there was once a floor there. Moss and weeds now stick to it. A ragged curtain of Ivy hangs from it. A canny Sparrow has made its nest on one of the protruding stones.
Nick glances at his feet, where the twentieth century has rudely intruded in the form of a safety barrier placed there by the well-meaning Folly Society.
"The tour usually only goes this far, but I think we can deviate from the script this once," he says, stepping over the barrier.
Rose agrees and follows him through the devestated east wall to stand in the silent dusk inside. The glow at the windows is very slowly darkening. Rose sits down in one of the patches of light and feels the warm kisses blown by the descending sun. She closes her eyes and slowly sinks into a comfortable position in the rubble. Nick sits down on a large stone nearby. He extracts skins, baccy, hash and lighter from his pockets and starts skinning up on his thighs.
Rose's eyes flicker open. Noticing the generous lump of dope she says, "Hey, that's the stuff you scored from Bingo. Why was it you decided to splash out on all that? We were talking about it the other night. Something about a petrol deal involving Shell."
Her face, picked out by the sun, glows bright in their shadowy surroundings. Her hair looks like strands of gold. Nick can't really enjoy the sight for wondering how to answer her remarks.
"Yeah, yeah, that's right," he says uncertainly. "Um, it all started in a pub." It sounds like he's about to tell a story, but he stops short.
"Sounds dodgy," says Rose.
Nick concentrates hard on sprinkling the hash into the papers.
"No doubt Jez was involved," she continues.
"No doubt."
"Blegg and Blagg," she laughs.
"What's that?"
"Blegg and Blagg. You must know about that."
"No. What?"
"Oh. Well, that's what they call you and Jez."
"Really? Who does? Why?"
"Oh I don't know, Bingo and that lot mostly. It's something to do with Jez's blegging forcing you to blagg. Basically to do with your purgatorial friendship."
Nick laughs. "Fair enough," he has to concede, "with friends like Jez, who needs enemies?"
"I hadn't noticed you had an especially smooth, blagg-worthy tongue though."
"No, I seem to be losing interest in that role. I think I must be moving on, leaving Jez behind. Though I'm sure he'll find his own path to advance along. It'll probably involve an Irish psychotic called Ronin, a bottle of Gin and the 3.15 at Newmarket."
"But Jez obviously brings out your blagging nature than I do."
"Yeah."
"I hope that's not a bad thing."
He hands her the lit joint. Wisps of smoke coil out of its smouldering tip, around their briefly touching fingers and away into the the last of the rich afternoon sun.
"No, definitely not," he says.
She looks at him, through amber-yellow light and charcoal-grey smoke. He gets up and picks his way over the rubble to the window. She sits and draws on the joint. She is now in shadow.
If you were standing on one of those hills at which Nick is gazing and you were looking west, towards the rugged mountains and valleys stretching away to the windy Atlantic, and you turned round to regard the flatlands of England, you would be struck by the ruined castle perched on its craggy hilltop. As the sun rushed to extinguish itself in the Atlantic behind you, its last light might reveal a dark figure standing in one of the crumbling fortress' windows. The figure is standing very still, almost blending into the grey walls from this distance. Like you, he is breathing in this sweet moment. Another figure comes and stands by him. They stay like that, close together, for some time. They fill the window and almost seem from this distance to blur together into one being. Time drifts by on the murmuring wind without being paid a thought by any of you. The scene is filled with a sense of calm focus. You are relishing every detail of this rare landscape, from the patchwork fields roaming away in the distance to the ancient fort on the windblown hillside, from the lush valley below to the play of light and passing clouds' shadows on every patch of gorse, grass, heather and raw rock. The people in the window must also be filled with the calm focus, directing it at the view or towards each other. You return your attention to them and see them slowly disappearing, sinking to the floor beneath the window. As the sun disappears into the hills behind you.

weeknighters chapter 1 (1998)

Driving through night. Hurtling past silent, sleeping houses. Turning on to a dual carriageway. Car clock glows orange in the dark, says 00:27. The roads are virtually empty. The dial on the speedometer climbs slowly from 60 to 70 and beyond.
Jez hunches in the front passenger seat. He is freezing in this rickety, draughty old dinosaur but he gave up trying to work the air conditioning a while ago. His voice comes from somewhere in the dark mass of his body in his overcoat, but it's hard to tell exactly where.
"It's bloody freezing. Are you sure you can't get some heat into this ridiculous car?"
Nick's eyes are wide and intense with concentration on the tunnel of headlight in the darkness ahead. They glisten as he turns his head slightly towards Jez to snap, "Hey, abuse the car when you've got one, alright? And I don't remember you complaining about not having to drive. Drunken bastard."
Jez examines the driver's glowering side profile for a moment before laughing, "Ha ha, you've got the fear haven't you?"
"Well forgive me if I seem a little serious. I'm just trying to get us there in one piece."
"No none of that. You've got the fear. It's blindingly obvious, you pussy."
They pass a road sign. Next exit for Birmingham. Straight on for London and Bristol.
Nick tries to justify his fear to the unforgiving Jez.
"Look, I'm just trying to see the idea through. It was a crazy idea. There we were on a Thursday night in the pub in the middle of nowhere as usual, bored and skint as usual. So we decide to escape the countryside, to go clubbing in the city. Which city? Any city."
Jez interrupts, "Oh, there goes the exit for Birmingham. That rules out one city anyway."
As if in agreement, Nick's foot does not flinch from the accelerator. The car keeps heading straight into the night. Nick shifts in his seat and continues, "I mean, we just dived in the car and now we find ourselves speeding directionlessly along . Some of us are feeling the beginnings of sobriety. I'm just trying to see the crazy idea through."
"To finish what you began," says Jez.
"What do you mean I began?"
"Well you're the one who's so frustrated with living with your parents. Christ, you've only been back a month. But you're always moaning about 'this rural prison' and plotting your escape to the city, where you'll suddenly have a new life and a new life-plan."
"If we're dishing out blame here, Jez, we never would've had to leave the Cottagers Inn in the first place if you hadn't got us in that situation with those guys."
"I was having a laugh. They knew that," protests Jez.
"That's not what they said to me."
"Alright, whatever, just put your foot down, let's get there."
Nick raises his eyebrows, shrugs, asks "Where?"
Jez thinks for a moment then explores some of the many pockets and folds in his great, crumpled overcoat. He finds his quarter bottle of Bells, takes a slug and shakily proffers the bottle. Bright moonlight seeps round the edges of the clouds that traverse the sky. There is a silver sparkle on the bottle as Nick raises it to his lips. The liquid sliding down his throat feels warm and good. The afterburn of the whisky causes him to cough a few times. The coughs turn into chuckles. Nick is actually relaxing. He focuses on the spreading warmth in his body and the improving mood in the car. The car drifts towards the verge of the road. Nick suddenly notices and yanks the steering wheel, swerves the car back on line and laughs.
Here's another road sign. The dual carriageway will shortly filter on to a motorway. Their spontaneous idea in the pub car park, the cry "Let's blow this joint!" is fast becoming a solid commitment. They did it to escape things like commitment. The big road sign looms over them. Motorway. The very car seems to gulp.
However, Nick is holding on to his new-found amusement at life and what he's doing with his.
"I just remembered, some of my mates from college moved to Bristol. We could stay with them, but I don't know what they'd think about us turning up in the middle of the night like this. Chances are we'd freak them out!"
Jez does not join in with Nick's laughter at their ridiculous behaviour. He seems deep in thought. A mumble emerges from somewhere in that sagging heap of overcoat and person, "It said next exit for last service station before motorway. Why don't we hit the services? Buy some time and some munchies."
Nick agrees and steers the shaking car to the left. The orange indicator lights flicker forlornly in the darkness as they leave the dual carriageway, winding down towards a roundabout. They turn left at the roundabout and approach an oasis of artificial light crowned by a glowing Shell sign.
They are now on a regular B road. The entrance to the garage forecourt meets the other side of the road. Opposite the entrance is a lay-by next to the lane in which Jez and Nick are travelling. Jez has been watching the garage intently. He sees it is quiet. He tells Nick to pull into the layby. Nick thinks this a little odd but obeys, feeling too spaced to bother about details.
The car rolls to a halt and Nick turns off the ignition. A sobering experience. The car suddenly lies silent and still and they survey the surrounding landscape of unhealthy patches of grass between worn tarmac roads. Nick stretches and yawns, "Shall we get our munchie..."
He breaks off. Jez is staring earnestly at him. Nick isn't prepared for this. He hadn't expected to see any more of Jez than that grubby overcoat for the entire journey, let alone be confronted by the dilated pupils in his dissipated mug. However, Nick has faced this burning stare before. He soon recovers his composure and teases Jez, "Uh oh, it usually means trouble when you get that look in your eye Jez."
"I know, I know," says Jez. "But we have a situation here. A situation that must be dealt with. We've come this far but we must go further. But in what sense? I mean, do you really still feel like going all the way to the city to end up in some club? Did you ever feel like it for longer than a second? We came on this journey for other reasons. Now we must address these issues and conclude the journey. In other words," he reaches into the back of the car and brings forward a double-barrelled shotgun, "let's hold up that petrol station."
Nick sounds less calm than Jez.
"What the Hell are you doing with that thing Jez? Don't stick it up in the air like that. Someone else might see it. What are you trying to do? Get us arrested? Kill us? Hey, don't point that barrel anywhere near me. And keep it down you madman. Why, Jez, why do you have a gun in my car? My car ..."
Jez lays the gun across their laps and makes calming motions with his hands.
"Alright Nick, calm down. Keep it cool. The gun is in the car because you picked me up after I'd been shooting with Dad last week (remember I had to do the father-son bonding thing), and I left the gun in here then. And now we're going to bond with the little man in the garage!"
"Yeah, then with a prison cell, you mad bastard."
Jez grips the butt and the barrel of the shotgun and leans towards Nick, "No, not mad. We can do this. We put scarves over our faces and storm in there. There's only one sorry sod in there and he doesn't care what happens to Shell's money. Our faces are covered. The car's not on camera because it's over here. In under two minutes we're out of there, scot-free, off clubbing in style or back home to pack our bags because we can finally afford to move out. Under two minutes. It's that easy. Now are you in or are you a poof?"
"You've obviously thought a lot about this," says Nick.
"You betcha. It's easy. Are you in?"
Nick looks back at his companion, who is almost phosphorescing with the intense strength of his conviction. Nick looks at him for a moment then lets out a hyena laugh.

They're lucky. The garage is empty. And it's open. They don't have to stand at the outside counter and ask an attendant behind bullet-proof glass to fetch them two Yorkies, a bottle of Coke and all the money in the till. Jez kicks the door open and explodes into the shop, his overcoat billowing behind him and his gun announcing this pheasant-shooting desperado's arrival.
They are clearly visible for the first time since they climbed into the dark car. However, they have made an effort, albeit pathetic, to hide their faces. The beady eyed security cameras mutely survey the scene, recording every detail in black and white for the men in black and white...
The first man wears a dark overcoat and a scarf around the bottom half of his head, from the bridge of his nose downwards. He has dark eyes under bushy eyebrows and untidy, probably brown hair that spills down the sides of his face and scarf. He points a double-barrelled, 20-bore shotgun at garage attendant Neil Mostin then shouts at him while approaching the sales counter.
The second man is 5.10 or 5.11 in height, the taller of the two by about 3 inches. He wears dark shoes and jeans, a light woolly jumper and a black donkey jacket. The jumper is stretched up and hooked over his nose to conceal the bottom of his face. However, the outline of his chin and jaw is vaguely perceptible through the jumper. On four occasions during the incident the jumper starts to slip off the man's face and he grabs it, pulling it back over his nose. Perhaps a freeze frame of one of these occasions would provide a glimpse of the man's whole face. He has short, spiky hair and large, probably green or blue eyes. He is unarmed and stays behind the first man but is clearly an accessory to the armed robbery.

Nick enters the shop less aggressively than his gun-toting companion. Jez is yelling at the unfortunate bloke behind the till, whose facial expression has rapidly changed from complete boredom to shock.
Jez shouts, "Don't move or I'll blow your head off. Don't move an inch. And don't touch that alarm. Don't think I can't see your hand move. If you touch that alarm I'll blow your fucking head off."
Jez advances on his victim. Nick searches the aisles of the shop for any hiding customers. There aren't any. Good: they only have to deal with the attendant. But Nick is uncomfortably conscious of being watched by the roving eyes up near the glowing strip lights. Across the shop, Jez is telling the attendant to empty the contents of the till into a plastic bag. But the attendant is also experiencing the unconsidered, action-packed high of an adrenalin rush.
He returns Jez's steely glare through eyes partly shaded by a green Shell baseball cap visor and says, "I dunno mate. That gun's pretty slim. I don't reckon it could do me much harm. Now why don't you just walk away and we'll pretend this never..."
Before the attendant can finish his act of trembling defiance, Jez is clutching his right ear, pressing the cold end of the gun hard against the left side of his head and giving him a few sinister words of advice.
"Oh yeah? You wanna get wise with me? Don't be stupid mate, it'll cost you your life. I mean that. And don't doubt it, this gun could kill you. At this range, it would blow your ear clean off. So, do you want to hand over the money and keep the side of your head or shall I just pull the trigger now?"
Jez pushes the hard steel further into the attendant's temple. Nick sees Jez's finger slightly squeeze the trigger. Feels sweat oozing out of every pore. Sees the attendant tense, as if preparing to act, to sweep the gun aside. Prepares to dive against Jez, to scream "No! Stop!" (don't take his life, don't ruin our lives). Time stops, body tenses, finger squeezes, skin oozes. Nick feels his jumper sliding down his face. Suddenly the attendant sighs and relaxes, a physical resignation: this job pays £3.50 an hour - why should I risk my neck for Shell? Nick grabs his jumper and pulls it back over his nose.
Look at those notes tumbling into the bag, surrounded by pound coins spinning through the air. The robbers exchange happy glances.
"Hurry up," shouts Jez.
The attendant is working as quickly as he can, holding a waterfall of cash above the bag.
"And don't touch that alarm until we're long gone or I'll be back in here," shouts Jez.
Tripping across tarmac to the car. Heads spinning. Jez turning to check on the attendant. One last look. Into the car. Let's get out of here. Sharp u-turn and flying away from the scene. Pulses slowing down but the car no longer feels cold.
"How much have we got?" asks Nick.
"80, 90... most of these are fives. There's probably about a hundred quid each; the bastard must've emptied the till earlier. Still, it's enough to score one hell of a smoke. Let's head back and visit the hippies. They'll still be up. They'll give us a smoke."
Nick agrees, puts his foot down. Back on the dual carriageway. The car is silent for a while. The clammy scent of adrenalin blows out the window, disappearing into the cool night air. Nick chuckles.
"You clown," he does a hammy impression of a macho gangster, "do you wanna keep the side of your head or shall I just pull the trigger now?"
Jez laughs. In the dark. In the car with no heating. Going to see the hippies with a bag full of cash.

big johnny & the king of morocco (2004)

Two young men in the street. Obviously not a menace to society, but probably not the recipients of many invitations to dinner either. Students, maybe. Or people posing as students.
They were discussing the day's business, which was the same as it had been every day for weeks.
"That guy was useless," complained one. "As desperate as us. Clearly hasn't had a smoke himself for a long time, let alone sold any."
"I could see you were about to tell him as much."
"Aye."
"Lucky we left."
An uneasy silence fell between them as they continued their trudge along this Glasgow street.
The last to speak had long hair, shoulder length and scruffy. Stray strands twisted out of the main body like they were trying to defect to a better-maintained barnet. The rest of his gangly frame was all rags and bones: a dark blue shirt open over a ragged black T-shirt; strong cheekbones. His name was Paddy.
The other's hair was shorter and fairer, but the fringe still hung in his eyes. He flicked it away from his line of sight every couple of minutes, but it always flopped back to its original position. He was stockier and healthier looking than Paddy, but not because his lifestyle was any more wholesome. Just because he was built that way. He was wearing a navy blue jacket that looked like it might have been smart once upon a time and his name was Dom.
"So where next?" he asked. He had a strong Scottish accent, which sounded all Glasgow in the way the words exploded from his mouth. There was something else in there though, moments of middle class softness hinting at time spent in Edinburgh or in one of the genteel towns on the east coast.
"Mad Micky?" suggested Paddy in his deep voice. His accent was more straightforward. That country lilt obviously came from the Scottish Borders. He was the one who got away.
They mulled over the prospect of visiting Mad Micky. His flat stank of cat's piss.
"These are desperate times," Dom eventually concluded. Paddy was in silent, twitching agreement.
Mad Micky's bedsit was above a fried chicken joint on Great Western Road. He opened the door and the stench of urine immediately hit the reluctant visitors' nostrils. It was like this every time. You never saw the creature responsible in there, just its soiled litter tray, sitting untouchable in a corner like a chunk of plutonium or a leprous hag. This room was just a toilet for the cat.
"What's the story guys?" Mad Micky slurred, scratching his beard in what had be an affected manner for someone not far into his twenties sporting growth not far beyond the bum fluff stage. You could never be sure though. The guy looked as familiar with the inside of a shower as any of them were with invitations to dinner.
Dom's eyes flickered with meaning, Mad Micky understood, and they filed inside to continue the conversation. The room was dingy despite a feisty bar heater and two windows feeding in grey light from outside.
"The eternal search continues. Have you heard anything?" Paddy asked as they sank into the old maroon settee.
Mad Micky was Irish, from the north, and his angular vowels filled the small space like drinkers crowding into a pub on a cold night.
"I've heard as much as you have Pads," he said. "The King of Morocco's pissed off with Britain because we owe him money and he's cut our supply."
"That rumour's a load of shite I reckon," Dom cut in. "It's blatantly the dealers at the top of the chain trying to push up the market value. The stuff'll hit the streets again soon, except you'll suddenly find it's 20 notes a draw instead of 15."
Dom said this with some authority. Being a Law student, albeit a failing one, he had an air of knowing about mysterious forces like "market value". Paddy couldn't resist adding his ha' penny worth though.
"Wee Johnny said he'd heard the Russian mafia were involved."
Dom bristled. "I don't care if it's because the Queen herself is sitting in Buckingham Palace getting merrily high on our supply. The end result is the same: nothing to go with these." He gestured towards a pack of Marlboro Lights he'd produced from his coat, then offered Mad Micky a cigarette.
"No thanks mate," said the Irishman.
Dom lit up and they stared at the orange bars of the heater.
It was spring 1996 and Glasgow was in the tiresomely tight grip of the worst drought in living memory. Withdrawal was getting to the student population, making them irrational. A rumour circulated that the King of Morocco was somehow responsible, which was obviously paranoid gibberish to everyone but the legions moping around campus suffering withdrawal. Other stories went round about folk obtaining cars and driving south on mercy missions, only to crawl back with tales of nationwide woe.
All you could do was stumble between contacts looking for leads. It had become a routine. Hope and disappointment.
"Any ideas about who else we could try man?" asked Paddy
For all Dom's blustering veneer, Paddy was better at getting down to the business of picking up information.
"You could try those socialist muppets who run the union," Mad Micky said. "They never seem short of something to smoke."
"Or women to screw," Paddy chipped in.
"Or shite to talk," said Dom, with an air of conclusion.
Mad Micky saw them to the door. Neither of his guests had ever seen him venture into the outside world. He seemed to do everything from the confines of his single room.
"Good luck with the political types," he called in his Belfast clatter as they descended the stairs. "Tell 'em skunk's the opiate of the people!"
His throaty laugh followed them to the pavement, along with his bedsit's terrible feline reek.
They ducked off Great Western Road and wove along the leafy byways leading to the union. Soon the towers and flying buttresses of the main university building pulled into view. But something was slowing their steps.
"I hate those union dicks," Dom said eventually.
"Aye, they really do your head in. Politics is such a cosmetic thing for them. Such a pick up line. Mad Micky unintentionally hit the nail on the head with his Marx joke there. It's like the union's a temple to their feebly constructed value systems and their flawed personalities."
"That's right sunshine. Let's try Big Johnny instead."
It was a flash of inspiration, Paddy had to admit. Even Big Johnny and the Hyndland crew were preferable to the false politicians lurking in the concrete union building, and they did occasionally come up trumps. Being this close to the university was making them both uncomfortable anyway.
They dropped down the hill on University Avenue and made across Byres Road for the beginning of Hyndland Road. This busy intersection was the epicentre of the West End, a gentrified enclave amid the city's housing estates. Besides Glasgow's main seat of learning, the area boasted a string of bistros with pretentious names that would quickly be scorned and spray-painted anywhere else in town, BBC Scotland and most of the English accents found this side of Edinburgh. The Victorian Gothic university building stared severely down on it all from its hilltop throne, across the park from the equally ornate Kelvingrove Art Gallery.
As he shuffled across the pedestrian crossing, Dom gazed along Byres Road. In the grey distance, the motionless cranes on the Clyde were the last skeletal remains of the city's proud shipbuilding past. But Dom was more interested in what was afoot in his own neighbourhood. The gentrification here was rife. It was beyond a joke. They came during the night and turned his favourite boozers and chippies into cappuccino bars and homeopathic clinics.
"Did you hear the latest? They're turning John Smith's books into a Starbucks," he said, turning to Paddy.
Paddy wasn't there. Dom sighed, raised his eyes and kept walking. Paddy was undeniably a good friend, the kind you could depend on. Unfortunately, one of the things you could depend on him doing was disappearing at any given moment. He'd turn up hours or days later saying he'd needed time to think. It normally looked from the state of his beer-stained clothes like thinking was the last thing he'd done. Sensitive, some people called him. The rough diamond of the Philosophy faculty, others said. A vintage nutter, Dom reckoned.
Dom trudged on up Hyndland Road, which quietened as he left the lunchtime hustle bustle of Byres Road behind. The only place he cared for up here was Cottiers', a former church now serving as a pub with a beer garden where you could smoke spliffs. He passed the beer garden, which looked empty and forlorn in the weekday, the wooden tables and benches stacked in preparation for good times to come.
After ten minutes or so he came to Big Johnny's building. He squinted up at the sandstone façade. Who knew what those walls could hold? He pressed the metal button on the buzzer and waited.
Nothing. He looked around and pressed again.
The buzzer suddenly crackled to life.
"Hello?" questioned a suspicious voice.
"Alright Barry it's Dom. Is Johnny in?"
"Alright Dom! Come on up!"
The door was swinging shut behind Dom when a bony hand caught it.
"Dom," called the hand's owner in his deep Borders voice.
Dom had reached the bottom of the stairs. He looked back and saw who it was and his face was a mask of long-suffering patience.
Paddy laughed nervously.
"Come on, we better present a united front to these freaks," said Dom as he stuck a foot on the first stone step.
Barry was at the entrance to the second floor flat. He was the shortest housemate. The friendliest too. Greetings were exchanged and he ushered them inside to the hall.
"Johnny's in his room guys," he said, heading towards the sitting room. A TV with a frozen image of Sylvester Stallone in a bandanna could be seen. "I'm halfway through Rambo. Come and watch it if you want. The next round of killing's about to begin, big time."
"Oh aye, a grand smokin' movie," Dom replied, testing the water.
"You'd be lucky," laughed Barry as he closed the door and hit play on the remote.
"THIS IS WAR," said John Rambo as the door clicked into the frame.
Big Johnny's room was straight ahead. To their left, a guy stood in the bathroom in front of the mirror dragging some kind of wax through his hair. He was six foot something and clad only in a towel.
"Alright guys," he mumbled tokenistically.
Paddy knocked on Big Johnny's door, which was decorated with a picture cut from the paper of the Rangers squad. Big Johnny's visitors both supported Celtic. Dom mimed tearing the picture down and stamping on it, receiving conspiratorial chuckles from Paddy. The man in the bathroom clocked this and narrowed his eyes. A voice came through the door inviting them in and they hastily went inside.
Big Johnny's room was obsessively clean and tidy. His bright engineering textbooks were square on the shelves. A half-read copy of The Celestine Prophecy lay under the lamp on the bedside table like it'd been placed there for a photo shot. Even the plants on the windowsill seemed to grow symmetrically.
Paddy thought back to Mad Micky's place. Stoners generally went one of two ways in their maintenance of their living space.
Big Johnny fitted in perfectly with his surroundings. His carefully spiked hair elongated his already sizeable form, as did the chunky soles of his Nike trainers. He was sitting at an IKEA table flicking through a copy of Loaded. His Adidas tracksuit top straightened and shone as he leant back in his seat to see who was entering his chamber.
That shine was the Hyndland possé all over. They would occasionally be spotted in a trendy club in town by Dom and Paddy's few friends who could be bothered going to those places. There'd be insistent chewing and uninspired conversation all round. Big Johnny and that bathroom guy would have Amazonian wenches on their arms like designer accessories, while Barry would have settled for the unmarried sister. Poor Barry, but even he wore too much hair gel for his own good.
"Look what the filthy Fenian cat's dragged in!" Big Johnny exclaimed, referring to his guests' football loyalties.
His voice was deeper than Paddy's and seemed to reverberate from the very depths of his hulking body. The accent was harsh, pure Central Belt, bred in one of those new towns trapped on the M8 between the country's two principal cities. He was jovial without being particularly likeable.
"What do I owe this pleasure to?" he asked, all obvious sarcasm.
"We're having a wander round the West End, seeing if we can sniff out any weed," said Paddy. "We've just been to see Micky."
"Oh aye, that guy's insane man!"
Paddy had never been able to establish exactly how Mad Micky had earned his screwball reputation. The guy just sat at home all day. Maybe in the armchair-bound world of dealers and potheads his Irish tone and wild appearance were enough to mark him out.
The Hyndland crew were no exception to this general lethargy. Apart from their appearances on the club scene they stayed indoors, tending to plants and hair or "just studyin' man".
Dom piped up, trying to sound nonchalant. "So, any chance of getting made, or is Mohammed of Morocco still playing hard to get?"
Big Johnny shook his huge head. "Nah man. I dunno about this King of Morocco business either. D'ye ken that guy Douggie who does Psychology? He was on holiday on the Costa Del Sol and he reckons the Spanish polis are cracking down big time on the Moroccan smugglers."
The would-be dealer stared reflectively at the centre page blonde in Loaded.
Paddy filled the silence, speaking almost to himself. "Apparently people have started disappearing off in cars, driving south in search of a score."
The casual comment would later strike Dom and Paddy as the king skin the rest of the day was rolled in.
Big Johnny suddenly looked up from the glossy temptress lying on the balsa wood table below him. "That reminds me man! My cousin Alan went off to try some contacts in Manchester. He left before the weekend so he should be back by now. Why don't you give him a shot? He lives in Maryhill."
Dom and Paddy exchanged a glance: Maryhill. Oh well, desperate times and all that.
The Goliath in Adidas wrote his cousin's address on a scrap of paper, his biro scrawl looping across the page like its scribe loping around a nightclub.
The visitors thanked Big Johnny and really meant it this time. As they returned to the hall, Big Johnny called after them: "Tell him I sent you and tell him we're gagging for a smoke over here as well."
His door shut behind them. The sound of machine gun fire came from the sitting room. They made for the stairwell.
Outside, the sky was overcast. The ominous morning had turned into a downright threatening afternoon. You could see why these characters never bothered with the outside world. If they lived in Honolulu they'd probably do the conga on the beach all day long.
Paddy's wanderings had given him a detailed knowledge of Glasgow's geography and he led them out of Hyndland by a series of back lanes. At one point they even cut straight through a random close and the overgrown garden out the back. "Ginger James used to live here," explained the gangly guide.
"Just get a move on," said Dom. He rubbed his hands in glee. "I can smell that sweet Sensimilla from here."
Having walked away from Byres Road and their normal territory for another twenty minutes, they came to the edge of Maryhill. Already you could see the restored tenements with habitually mown lawns giving way to squat new blocks of flats. More litter appeared on the pavements. A burnt out car sat among the weeds on a patch of wasteland.
As with everything in this city, irony lurked beneath it all. The guy in the 24-hour garage round the corner, a regular local oracle, had once pointed it out to Dom.
"A rich woman called Mary Hill donated this land to the people of Glasgow," he'd explained in his heavy drawl, almost speaking through his nose in the classic fashion. "Her one condition was that the area be named after her."
His eyes drifted to the black, rain-streaked windows. "Now Mary Hill is associated with all this."
Dom grinned ruefully to himself. Paddy, meanwhile, had managed to dredge more positive thoughts from the quagmire of his interior world. He'd returned to a theme that had obsessed him a few terms ago: the words people used to describe things. Looking at this slap-dash suburb, the Tory voters in the West End would probably cringe and call it "careless". He preferred the term "carefree".
They were both still wrapped in this blanket of silent contemplation when they reached the top of the high street. Dom's thoughts had inevitably turned back to the combustible treats that were hopefully lying in wait. But, whether preoccupied by semantics or Sensie, they both quickly snapped out of it when voices called their names. The last time someone had yelled at them in this part of town, Dom had ended up fending off eight jellied up neds with a smashed Liebfraumilch bottle.
They looked in the direction of the hollers to see two acquaintances from the union bar hurrying across the road. This first year pair was from Inverness and everything about them said first year and Inverness. They bounded up, all floppy bum heads hung over from the Baggy era and clumsy skater clobber.
"Alright Dom!" exclaimed the one with the Yin Yang ear stud.
"Alright Paddy!" said the other, with equal enthusiasm.
"Alright guys," the older two chorused. They were pretty sure these characters were called Sean and Kev but, despite the distinction provided by the earring, they could never remember which was which.
"What brings you to this neighbourhood?" asked Yin Yang with a cod raised eyebrow.
"Just out for a walk," shrugged Dom.
"What, in Maryhill?" queried the other half of Kev/Sean, quite reasonably.
These guys seemed even hungrier than Dom and Paddy - fervent new recruits to l'erb making an appeal to distant acquaintances - but Dom wasn't about to sling them any scraps. He was intent on guarding his meagre lead.
"Aye," he said.
Kev/Sean looked up and down the street. Obviously this was one conversation that wasn't going to be about the Celts' recent performance on the field.
"We're trying to score guys. You know of anyone who's selling at the minute?" Kev/Sean asked in the Invernetian accent, which was equal parts warm embrace and half-Napoleon.
Like two cottagers he'd once walked past in Kelvingrove Park at midnight, Dom didn't miss a beat.
"You tried the love-in at the union?" he suggested. "I've heard they're turning tricks. And you'll probably get to smoke up with some Marxist minger who gives it up if you know that Che Guevara's Cuban."
"Bunch a muppets," observed Yin Yang.
The wisdom of the character judgement brought out wry smiles all round. But Paddy looked at Dom and he could see it wasn't going to help the lads from Loch Ness any. Dom's facial expression was as impenetrable as another famous east coast landmark, Peterhead prison.
"Well, good luck with the heroes of the people," Dom concluded.
Paddy found himself feeling guilty about this brazen denial of their young friends' cry in the darkness of abstinence. He extracted a pouch of Golden Virginia from the folds of the vertical washing line he called home and offered it around.
The rolling ritual over, it was time to return to the job in hand.
"Enjoy taking the Maryhill air," said Kev/Sean, his voice wavering with a mixture of sarcasm and outright confusion.
The student gathering dispersed into the stream of folk going about their business on the high street. Teenage girls shoved prams, their brothers swaggered in caps and Kappa, their grandparents hunched down the shops for The Daily Record, and the two sets of dishevelled young men headed in opposite directions with rollies smoking between fingers and lips.
Dom and Paddy crossed the road in front of one of the gaudy orange double-deckers that bounced around the city. Glasgow Smiles Better was the message of hope on the bus's bright sides. Yeah, the gangsters only took one finger nowadays.
They continued along the high street, past Co-Op's utilitarian blue and white sign. Dom had resorted to that place during a period of mythic skint-ness at the end of first year. He turned to Paddy, thinking he'd appreciate this anecdote from the wild side of grocery shopping; he'd probably call it a "culinary purgatory" or some such shite.
But Paddy had something on his mind too.
"That was kinda tight on Kev and Sean," he said. "We could've maybe sorted them out… I mean, leaving them at the mercy of the union dicks was a bit heavy…"
"Kev and Sean, Sean and Kev, fuck 'em!" exploded Dom. "We can't afford to take losers like that along for the ride. In happier times I would've personally rolled them a number right there and then, but it's every man for himself these days."
Paddy could see Dom was taking no prisoners. His eyes rolled away like marbles in a tube as his companion ranted.
Dom boiled to a conclusion, his frustration exorcised for the time being. "They might get lucky at the union - we don't know. And besides, if you're such a fuckin' Mother Teresa why didn't you say anything?"
It was true, Paddy realised. He had colluded against the hapless skaters with his silence.
They carried on. Few words passed between them for some minutes. The comfortable silence between good friends was laced with the unspoken thoughts of two characters with a love-hate relationship.
They left the main drag and skimmed furtively along the cracked pavements on the network of side streets. They seemed vaguely on the right track from Big Johnny's tediously detailed directions, which they'd quickly lost interest in and only half listened to. Unfortunately there was no one around to ask; at least no one who wasn't sweating pints and twitching like they were practising for rigor mortis.
Turning another corner, they spotted a narrow street that just had to be Alan's from the intricate mental picture his cousin had painted. Sure enough, the sign on the blackened brick wall at the mouth of the street matched the address on the scrap of paper Dom gripped like the key to a bottomless treasure trove.
Paddy looked down the thin, gloomy avenue. It could not have been described as welcoming. In fact, it filled him with cold, creeping fear. The austere slate roofs of the terraced two-up-two-downs blocked out the sun and threw the curtained windows into eternal shadow. Cars on both sides of the road were parked half on the pavement, making it a mission for both motorists and pedestrians to squeeze past without scraping paint-work and drawing an irate vest-wearer out of the forest of front doors.
Dom could see this place was worming its way into Paddy's head.
"Come on man, there's a draw of the good stuff and happy days at the end of this rainbow," he encouraged.
He clapped Paddy on the back and led him into the beginning of the shadow. They started down the middle of the road, between fat wheels, spoilers, smoked windows and obscenely long aerials.
Paddy had heard of a street in this part of town that was inhabited only by dealers. According to the story, the suppliers sat in second floor windows hawking offers down at the punters cruising past in cars.
"Ecstasy! Trips! Speeed! Haash!"
Deal reached, a ball of bills would be flung up and product dropped.
"Here y'go big man. Can ye catch?"
"Fuckin' right I can biggie, when it's a fifty spot being tossed!"
Admittedly, the tale had the implausible ring of urban myth when heard from some third year History student in the union trying to up his street credentials. There was also a notable lack of accommodating pushers queuing up to flog them a cube of black, but all these souped-up boy racer mobiles and satellite dishes did make Paddy wonder if this might be the mythical alley.
On the grey roofs, a jumble of TV aerials reached for the sky like barren branches in a winter forest. The occasional rubbish bin sat between the fenders spewing its contents into the gutter. Half way down the road was a rusty yellow skip that looked like it had been overflowing forever. The bulky black bin liners rising above its steel sides could have contained anything, or anyone.
This was a canyon of the damned.
On the other side of a grimy kitchen window, a slumped man looked up from his plate of something processed on toast.
It was the valley of the shadow of unhealth.
The prospect of a few pints followed by an early bed was beginning to appeal to even Dom by the time they reached the right doorbell. Paddy pressed the plastic button briefly, then looked flustered and pressed again for a longer time. As the electronic bleep echoed in their ears they glanced up and down the street with hands in pockets and hearts sounding like the guy in the kitchen's probably did.
A hoarse voice came from behind the door. "Alright, Ahm there Ahm there."
They heard a body pause on the far side of the wood, presumably checking on its visitors through the spy hole. Obviously perceiving no threat in Dom and Paddy's half-baked appearance, it opened the door.
"Alright guys, how you doing?" said the man.
"Sound cheers, we're looking for Alan," replied Dom, pleasantly businesslike.
Alan nodded, thick hair swinging on either side of a ruddy face, and his eyes filled with recognition. Paddy could see this look was prompted by more than the familiar name, but sensed that Alan was still going to make them sweat here.
"We're mates of your cousin Johnny… over in Hyndland? He sent us over," Paddy said.
"Hyndland, Johnny? That lanky bastard's about as Hyndland as the cunts round here," observed Alan.
The two doorsteppers laughed ingratiatingly.
Alan looked them up and down. "So how can I help you lads?"
Dom frowned, his smooth drug-buying manner flummoxed by the unprecedentedly direct question.
"Ehhh Johnny thought you might be able to sort us out like," he managed.
Now it was Alan's turn to frown. "That cheeky cunt," he exclaimed, but soon broke into a smile that spread relief through the visitors like smoke into a bong.
"On ye go." He ushered them inside and turned to lead the way down the corridor into the house's dingy innards.
Paddy caught Dom's eye and raised eyebrow as he closed the door on the daylight outside.
Through in the living room, past a kitchen and a staircase, they were confronted by an eight-bar sitting on a low table amid scattered paraphernalia.
This brazenness marked Alan as a more serious player than the characters Paddy and Dom normally scored from, half-arsed student dealers who indulged their gangster fantasies by hiding eighths under floorboards and 'teenths in teapots. Once you reached a certain level you had bigger things to get paranoid about, Paddy figured.
Dom eyed the cracked brown block and let rip with the surprised and delighted laugh of someone's fat aunt who's just been offered a slice of cream cake at the church fete.
"This stuff up from Manchester aye?" he asked.
"Aye. It's pretty grim down there at the minute, King o' Morocco playin' havoc everywhere man. Not as bad as up here mind," said Alan.
He indicated for them to park themselves and slumped into an armchair next to a TV playing Reservoir Dogs with the sound down. Mr. Blonde was dancing around with a razor blade in front of a cop tied to a chair.
Paddy got a decent look at their host in the flickering glow of the TV set and the dim light of the room's two or three table-lamps. You could tell Alan was related to Big Johnny. Alan was tall, obviously not to the same degree as his oversized cousin but he would be able to look Paddy in the eye without standing on tiptoes. The family likeness wasn't physical though, it was more in a certain harshness hovering around the eyes and the tight mouth. You just knew it would be found throughout the room at a gathering of the clan in some west of Scotland bungalow. Toddlers on the rug, brothers sipping whisky at the mantelpiece and the widowed grandmother in the best seat would all exude that joyless demeanour.
"Where are you from Alan? You don't sound like you're from the same part of the world as Johnny," Paddy inquired. Compared with Johnny's Central Belt rumble, Alan's curried vowels and biting consonants were as West Coast as a deep fried Mars bar.
"Ayrshire man. Johnny's side of the family are from Livingstone way, but my Dad's side are all from Ayr," he said firmly.
A tokenistic conversation ensued, Paddy and Dom doing their best not to stare with lolling tongues at the lump on the table in the middle of the room. They began with the Tarantino film playing at Alan's shoulder before making the inevitable move to the subject of football. Alan supported Rangers and preferred Reservoir Dogs to Pulp Fiction, both of which suggested a brutal personality. As he often did when he found himself in the living room of a vaguely threatening dealer, Dom told himself to keep his wits about him and in no time he'd be out of there with a grin on his face and a packet in his pocket.
Alan was just finishing on Maryhill, prompted by some observation about the area from Dom. "It probably looks like the Wild West to you University types, but people here are the same as anywhere else, just getting on with their lives man."
This was the first of Alan's mostly monosyllabic comments that had interested Paddy. It tied in with his earlier thoughts about "careless" and "carefree". Then Alan ruined it by adding: "Mind you, go over the hill into Possil and they are fuckin' animals. They'll happily haul breeze blocks over the balcony onto ya heid."
Paddy's attention drifted back to the brown on the table and the horrors on the screen. He was happy to hear Alan and Dom get down to business.
"So how much are you boys after?"
"Ehh probably a quarter - we can only scrape together a 30 spot between us at the minute. Waiting for a cheque to clear."
Alan grunted in acknowledgement and his eyes played over them like flames licking out of a burning building.
"You after anything else?"
"Ehh nah… nah not really, we've only got the 30 spot."
Alan considered them for a moment, seeming to weigh something up. "Only normally people buy at least an ounce from us," he explained. "I don't usually sell small draws because it's not worth it. You're mates of Johnny's so I'll do it for you no bother… but it'll have to be 35, given the current situation."
The cards were down and this guy wasn't playing for matchsticks. It was a case of like it or get tae fuck.
Dom gave a businesslike nod, desperately trying to retain some control of the situation, and Alan crossed to the table and picked up the block.
"I better get this under a hot blade. Won't be a minute lads." He disappeared into the kitchen pursued by Dom's excuses for their poverty, which tried to cover up the fact that their only source income was by application to their parents.
They heard Alan shuffle around the kitchen and turn on a gas ring. Dom watched Reservoir Dogs without concentrating and Paddy stared into space.
Soon Alan reappeared and threw a dark lump wrapped in clingfilm into Dom's lap.
"There y'go boys. I've gotta go out myself so… on ye go."
They parted company at the end of the shady street. Alan, now clad in a donkey jacket, appeared to be heading in the direction of Possil. Dom was still trying to make conversation and had even returned to the thorny topic of the football, but it didn't seem appropriate to ask where Alan was going.
The dealer was telling them they were welcome to pay him another visit, if they wanted more than a quarter, when Paddy remembered Big Johnny. "Oh aye, Johnny told us to tell you to get round his with some smoke," he cut in.
"Did he now?" Alan replied, his face exploding with mock rage. "That cheeky cunt."
He turned and paced away into the grey landscape.
Dom maintained the macho solemnity of the encounter until they were round the corner, then whipped their piece of fortune from his jacket pocket and waved it in front of Paddy's nose.
"Fuckin' made! Have it! All aboard the highness express," he sang out, dancing a clumsy jig. The last time Paddy had seen Dom this happy was when he'd pulled Jenny with the jugs who did Law. They'd gone out for a term before Dom had got bored.
They headed back the way they'd come: along the cracked pavements, past Co-Op, between the pram-pushers and pensioners on the high street, and on to Queen Margaret Drive. The unspoken agreement was that they were making for Dom's flat, which was closer than Paddy's, to smoke as much as their long-suffering lungs could handle. Their pace gradually quickened, Dom leading the way.
They were barely past the all-night garage when Dom cracked.
"These butterflies are having a friggin' gang bang in my stomach Pads! Let's get into that park and skin one up for the road."
"Best idea you've had all day."
"Cheeky cunt," snapped Dom, imitating the rough tones of the character they'd had just had an audience with.
They crossed the road and went into a children's park, where they took a seat on one of the benches overlooking a climbing frame, a slide and a dented metal litter bin. Dom quickly set about assembling the apparatus on a plane he'd smoothed in the front of his jacket, ripping the papers, baccy and blow from his pockets with the eagerness of a child lifting his greedy hands from the lucky dip. A woman stared disapprovingly down from the second floor of one of the grey blocks bordering the park, and it crossed Paddy's mind that Dom could have been subtler. Then Dom glanced up and caught her eye.
"What's wrong with that witch?" he muttered. "The kids won't be off school for at least another hour."
As if corrected, the woman faded from the window. They returned their attention to the important job in hand and lap. With two Rizlas stuck together, Dom unwrapped the clingfilm from the brown block and lifted his Bic lighter to it.
He flicked the cog on the Bic and they both waited for the first sweet hash aroma as the flame ate into the lump. But none came. A few wisps of smoke drifted up, but it smelt more like a burnt nut.
"Wha…" splutted Dom.
It didn't look right either. It wasn't crumbling at all, merely smearing flaky burnt matter and black char on Dom's fingertips.
"Wait a fuckin…" Dom's usual easy flow of words had been momentarily gagged by confusion, but Paddy could hear the anger growing in his friend's voice.
Dom suddenly snapped the block in half and, holding it in front of them, revealed a white centre.
"It's a fuckin' nut!" Dom exclaimed, leaping from the bench like he'd been electrocuted.
Paddy almost expected balls of fire to hail from the sky in sympathy with the rage shaking Dom's stocky frame and erupting from his eyes.
He picked up one half of the contentious object, which Dom had flung to the ground.
"Aye," he said after a brief examination, "it is a nut."
"Fuckin' help Sherlock Holmes here is! We've been had by fuckin' Big Johnny Holmes and his dodgy cousin. Right, let's get back there and…" Then a realisation hit Dom and he struck his forehead with equal force. "But Alan's done one into Possil now. That's the last we'll see of that scheming schemie, with our 30 spot he'll be able to live like a king for days in that neighbourhood."
The hapless scam victims stared at each other.
As Dom stormed back on to Queen Margaret Drive, the low park gate clanged shut behind him with an unnerving metallic ring. The glaring wifey had returned to the window. He momentarily considered heaving a breezeblock at her, before returning his fury to its rightful recipient. That Ayrshire gyppo.
It was tempting to head round to Big Johnny's and rearrange his Engineering textbooks, which would constitute severe mental cruelty for that streak of scented piss, but Dom realised this would be futile. Johnny hadn't knowingly colluded with his wrong-headed cousin's wrongdoing. Alan seemed to have about as much time for Johnny as Dom and Paddy had and would probably rip off his cousin as guiltlessly as he would any other gullible nut smoker.
Dom had one more idea up his increasingly ragged sleeve. After that all doors would be closed and the only way out of this mess would lie in the union bar, McEwans lager and oblivion.
They could try the political wannabes in the union. After all, they were pretty much the only source Dom and Paddy hadn't tapped that day. Then he cringed as he remembered he'd sent Sean and Kev down there. If there was any smoke to be had inside that concrete building, having put up with some muppet's torrid spiel about Fidel Castro's influence on student politics, the Invernetain freshers would've surely got there already.
Nonetheless, anything was worth a crack at this stage in the game.
"It's a long shot, but, hey, losers can't be choosers…" Dom began, before realising Paddy had disappeared.
The would-be hash philosopher was nowhere to be seen. Just like that flake to pull one of his vanishing acts at a time like this.
Dom sighed as the beginning of Byres Road and the West End pulled into view, and he carried on towards the union to try his luck with the socialist muppets.

ernest ragman chapter 3 (2004)

Mid Queensland. The cool of dawn. A hundred degrees in the shade. Cane Toads slowly grill on the roads. The frozen food aisle in Mackay Aldis spontaneously combusts. Outside Gladstone, a farm worker drops to his knees in awe of the shimmering face of God sipping a bottle of Bundie in the brightness overhead. The world gets ready to make like candle wax.
I tried to roll out of the tent before realising I'd pitched it up against the park wall. It had become a matter of urgency to escape that narrow blue space. I undid the zip and squeezed myself out, looking like one of the terrible creatures that roam the long grass round here. Standing and rubbing my hair, which was rigid with dry sweat and highway dust, I realised there were a few houses on the far side of the bushes. Outside one, a man in a baseball cap with hair exploding out of his open shirt washed his car, the water glistening as the hose doused the well-maintained Hyundai. He blinked at me through the bushes like a man peering into the monkey cage at the zoo.
In the absence of the offer of a cuppa and some possum on toast from the kindly Queenslander, I staggered into the park to see what facilities the local kids hadn't torched.
Toilet, shower, barbecue. None of them smashed or smeared. Even itinerants lived like kings in this blessed land, where a smile was never far away, the sharks stayed off the reef and folk's eyes were empty of secrets and care.
Half an hour later I was chewing on a banana in the shaded picnic area and looking less like a sleep-deprived murderer; or at least looking like one who could be reasoned with. I can't have had more than four hours kip but my eyes no longer felt like marbles in nutshells.
I heaved my sack of eternally dirty laundry on to my back. It was hard to tell what distinguished the dirty clothes from the nominally clean shorts and T-shirt that now covered my scrubbed white flesh like an old towel on a fresh slab of Perch. Maybe I should have burnt the lot of them and streaked through the fields with the sun on my back. Didn't give much to my chances of hitching a lift that way though. It might also have given the pig hunters the wrong idea.
I bought a drink in the petrol station from a woman in a denim shirt who asked too many questions.
"Just travelling," I said in answer to her last inquiry as I ducked back out to the silent forecourt. If she wanted entertainment she could call into that discussion on the radio about how to de-lice lambs.
I crossed the Bruce Highway and trudged along the dry grass edging the asphalt to the turning for Airlie Beach. There was nothing but sunlight. It reduced everything to one dimension, just white heat and deep brown shadow. I took up position in the shade of a Eucalyptus tree just beyond a sign saying Airlie was 26km away.
A few cars crawled by but none were biting. And after I'd put on my best rags.
After a while a guy in a dented combie stopped. He had the lively manner and the glistening eyes of a drunk.
"First 'itcher I've seen on this road this year. Been 'ere long?"
"Nah, half an hour uh something."
"I ain't goin' far. Turnin' off 'bout five clicks down."
"I'll leave it."
Fumes from the exhaust and dry mud clinging to tyres as he pulled away.
I rubbed my left eye and yawned until I thought my mouth was going to split. Maybe I should have been thankful for this peace and quiet given I was headed into civilisation, or what passed for it north of Rockie.
A green coach swung off the Bruce just as I was lathering on some factor 30. On the side, chunky lettering saying "Oz Express" scrolled across a bright yellow picture of Australia with thumbs-up symbols marking the coach's route around the country. At the windows, lines of eyes stared down at me. Backpackers. Human cargo. Barely formed identities being transported between resorts where they could spend their parents' money on watered-down Daiquiris.
My thumb wavered. I hadn't fought my way out of Byron to get sucked into that themepark on wheels, but I was curious as to whether these designer hippies would have any charity for a fellow rucksack-wearer.
The thumb came proudly and confidently out.
The bus swooshed remorselessly on.
It disappeared over the brow, leaving me with a pool of sun cream between my feet and the first rage of the day surging inside me. I imagined all the letters the local constabulary would have to write if someone tampered with Oz Express' brakes.
I finished with the lathering, confronting the traffic from my shadowy spot like a ghost sent to ignite their car-driving, middle class guilt. Time wore on, a surprisingly painful process even in the shade.
Eventually I got lucky with a bottom-of-the-range BMW, the kind my father drove.
"Goin' to Airlie?" inquired the driver, somewhat redundantly, while a girl in her late teens looked on from the passenger seat.
My bag in the boot, me in back, the road under the wheels.
The guy eyed me in his mirror, occasionally turning to yell at me. He seemed to have come to the conclusion that I was mentally deficient in some way. Perhaps it was the layers of sun block.
"Haven't picked up any 'itchers for years. Used to the whole time but 'aven't for a while, dunno why. Must be all the trouble they 'ad in the outback." His accent was one dropped H away from drinking in the same saloon as the stockman. "S'pose you like this method of transport for meeting the locals eh?"
I was beholden to this man for the lift, but other than that, it was hard to find a reason to like him. It was more than his choice of motor that reminded me of my father.
Fortunately the girl piped up.
"So you're from England?"
I turned from the man's thick neck and fat collars to her enthusiast's eyes. She wasn't an attractive girl but had the confidence born of privilege. Probably wore a brace during puberty.
Unsurprisingly the name of my hometown left a blank expression on her face.
"If it's not near Edinbrah or London I won't've heard of it," she laughed. "The tour I did stopped off there before we wen' across to France. Oh, think we did Wales as well."
"You were on one of those… those tours?"
"Yeah. It kind of sucked really. Twenty-five European cities and we had to run across every one of them. Barely had time to buy postcards. They kept telling us we had to get to Bratislava by Tuesday."
She brightened.
"But Prague was beautiful as! I spent a month there on an exchange organised by Dad's business club. Praha!"
The man had descended into a surly silence as his daughter rabbited on about her five-figure sojourn. Years of toil, his silence seemed to say. For this.
"Can you speak any Czech then?" I asked.
"Trochu," she said uncertainly.
"And that means?"
"A little."
We drifted into silence as the landscape flashed by, growing greener as we neared the coast. The girl darted a glance at her father, who continued to slouch into his own thoughts. I was making her nervous: it had been her idea to give me the lift and now she didn't know how to follow the idea through to its conclusion. Maybe I could help her there. All I needed were the tools in my bag.
"So what takes you to Airlie Beach?" I said.
"Getting a job and a flat there for the summer," she beamed.
"What's it like?"
"Sweet as!"
She assumed the air of a raconteur recalling the golden days of Berlin between the wars.
"It's… it's the most beautiful place I've ever been. We used to come here on holidays when I was a kid and it still blows me away. Europe might have heaps of cathedrals but it's got nothing like this!"
She gestured at the vista before us. As the car came over the crest of a hill, we were met by a sweeping view of turquoise sea dotted with islands covered in lush rainforest. Yachts flecked inlets and bays, clouds stuck to the horizon like cotton wool to the cuffs of a Santa Claus costume. The world seemed static, hanging in this moment of tropical tranquillity.
"Not bad eh mate?!" hollered the guy.
I wound down my window and breathed in the sea air, bringing memories of Byron breezing into my mind. I wound the window back up. The car swung round corners and the view slowly disappeared as we dropped to sea level. Soon we were passing a sign saying, "Welcome to Airlie Beach! Tourism is our business!" This promised to be a taste of the real Australia then.
Hotels and motels began to rear out of the sides of the road, fronted by packed car parks and banners singing out messages like "Bed and barbie" and "No vacancies but welcome anyway". The buildings were all freshly painted, the pavements clean. I'd once dreamed of a place like this, but then I'd dreamed many things that had seemed absurd in the morning.
We parked outside a dive shop in the centre of town. The girl and I said we'd probably bump into each other again, neither of us believing it.
"Don't party too hard," called the man as I shut the door behind me. No danger of that: comments like his generally made me want to find a bunker somewhere windblown and not speak, sleep or eat for a long time. I retrieved my bag and headed along the pavement.
Whereas Byron felt like it was built yesterday, this place gave the impression of having received a final dust five minutes ago. Everything was in order, from the benches that would probably stay free of rust for dry decades to come, to the tidy window displays sparkling in the morning sun.
The window of a beachwear shop drew me inside. I looked around as the attendant, a guy with a Mohican and a T-shirt that appeared to have been on the receiving end of a paint ball, busied himself staring at the ceiling fan. So this was where these characters came to buy their uniform. I looked at some of the price tags. I couldn't afford a sweatband, let alone one of those hoodies that would help me fit in with the surfing swarm.
Then I spied a discount basket. "Everything $10," proclaimed a sign written in red marker pen by someone with a penchant for exclamation marks. Inside lay a crumpled pair of shorts that looked like they might be part of a surfer's straight jacket, an iPod case with a broken zip and no holes for the leads, and a floppy hat in a gaudy Hawaiian design. I picked up the hat and twirled it on a finger. A mauve and lime tangle of petals and stalks covered the cotton. Disgusting, yes, but a wise investment given that I spent most of my time nowadays baking at the side of the road, and that I was about to go undercover.
"Looks heaps good on yah buddy!" the guy offered.
This almost persuaded me to ditch the hat and torch the place, but I smiled and pulled out my wallet. The tumbleweeds had taken over in there, I noticed with some alarm but no surprise.
"This yer first time in Airlie?" asked the guy as I handed over a note.
"Yeah."
"Doin' some sailing?"
"Ooh… just sinking into the place," I smiled as I put the hat on.
"Well you'll love it… you'll never wanna leave."
Would this town really be Byron Bay mark two? Consoling myself that at least that would help me carry out my plan, I pulled the hat further towards my eyes and left the shop.
Further down the street I stopped in front of an Aboriginal craft outlet. Looking at the intriguing items in the window as I lit a cigarette, I remembered my wistful thoughts in Byron of escaping to the outback. So much had changed since then. Now Airlie was the best place for me to be, and it wasn't for the Great Barrier Reef. I hadn't been joking with the Mohican in the clothes shop: I was here to blend in; to lie low among the rest of the travellers until it was safe.
A pair of eyes glinted at me from inside the shop. They were attached to a man with a beard. Not wanting to repeat the conversation I'd had in the Aboriginal emporium in Byron, I flicked my fag butt and carried on.
Finding a place to stay evidently wasn't going to be the greatest challenge ever faced by a backpacker: not like that bungee jump in New Zealand, no siree. Hostels of various descriptions interspersed the postcard racks and internet cafes. Across the road was a relatively low-key establishment, consisting of a couple of dorms above an Irish pub. Down the street, a rather different proposition was heralded by a fat sign featuring a waltzing camel and crocodile. The camel raised a comedy thumb and the crocodile winked; surfboards and beer jugs flew out the sides of their merry whirl. I reached for my crack pipe.
And stepped beneath the creatures' shadow.
The front desk was manned by a team of Australian women. They made a refreshing change from the usual smug Irishmen with a deep knowledge of the local restaurants and the Swedish girls staying in dorm 18 - until one of the women shot me a critical look.
She wagged her finger at my fresh cigarette.
"You can't smoke in here dear," she said.
"There are designated areas for it, y'see," she carried on once I'd groaningly disposed of the offending Marlboro Light. "This is a red area, so you can't smoke or drink. In the orange areas drinking's okay but smoking's not allowed… and in the green areas you can do what yah like! There's a sign explainin' it all over there."
This place was perfect.
I looked at the price list above the poster-plastered counter, where the women bustled around serving the other guests. It was busy in there, packed with demanding teenagers pouting like they were talking to their parents. The pushy punters reminded me of the commuters on the tube in London who I'd bounced between on occasion, their features drawn by city life. Maybe these people were worse. At least the people on the tube had the honesty to look through you, whereas the backpackers were all so interested in everything and "Are you looking at my travel wallet? Are you trying to steal my plane tickets? I'm not scared of using the Mace gun Mum gave me!"
I gulped at the price of a dorm bed. As I reeled with the shock of what they were asking for a bunk above a snoring German, my rucksack slipped off my shoulders and I fell backwards over it. A guy with tan lines left by his sunglasses momentarily trained his pale eyes on me, before returning to smoothly counting out $50 notes. A few others checked out what the disturbance was, but not a smile was raised by my dyslexic display. Suck at the marrow, kids.
I wasn't going to get off that easily though. Leaning her arms and sizeable breasts on the counter, the woman chuckled at the heap I had become.
"Bit shorta funds are yah love?"
I jumped back up.
"I'm fine, I just can't believe you have the nerve to charge those prices for a spot in a colony of bed bugs."
The expression on her corn-fed face flickered. One of her cohorts looked over from a pile of paperwork. I'd obviously struck a nerve.
"Nah, actually, we gas the rooms for bugs every mornin'… so we ask you to stay outta there between tin and iliven."
There was no point in hearing any more of the club's rules if I couldn't afford a membership. I picked up my bag.
"I see you have a tent," the woman astutely observed. "You can pitch it 'ere if you want. We don't normally let people… and you were a bit rude to me weren't yah? But if yer 'ard up you can camp for 'alf price. If it'll cheer yer up!"
I wasn't going to crack but I did want in. I managed a smile.
"That's more like it eh."
We went through the formalities. I had to show my passport, which meant she found out my name.
"There y'go Ernest," she smiled when she'd finished copying my details into about five different ledgers. "Go and see Seamus - 'e'll show you where to camp. It's in front of the manager's office so you better behave!"
In the door leading to the rest of the site leant a tall guy in his mid twenties with sandy hair and a T-shirt bearing the camel and crocodile logo.
He had Seamus written all over him. Figuring I could find the spot by myself, I fixed my eyes on the floor and made to walk through the door.
Two bulging shoulders appeared in front of me.
"Saareeh mate," he exclaimed in a broad Southern Irish accent, and slapped me on the back. "Yuh need tuh show yur parsport tuh gut un: buckpuckers only un hir - nooh loocals."
My passport was still in my hand. He examined it with a frown wrinkling his brow. I stood and lolled, dazed by his spiel.
"That's Errr-nest!" the woman called over, with the air of someone who'd known me for years. "He's alright Seamus - show 'im the camping spot."
Seamus solemnly nodded at her and ushered me through the door.
It led into a veritable backpacker's Disneyland. Buffet restaurant, bar, pool tables, phone booths, internet terminals, nightclub, they were all there. Everything to make the backpacker feel comfortable.
But this civilisation would crumble, for they had let a leper into the castle.
The guy saw me grinning. "Uhmprussuve usn't uht mate? So whur yuh cum frum tuhdaay?"
"Well…"
Suddenly a cacophonous crackle emitted from a walkie-talkie hanging at his hip. He held his hand in my face and pulled the machine from its holster.
"Has twenny three been gassed yet?" the machine exploded. "Repeat: 'ave you gassed twenny three? Party of tin expected shortly off the Oz Express. Over."
Czzzccchhhh
Seamus held down the button, looking at me distractedly as he did so. "Yuur, did twanny three hours ago. Only guest in there was ahsliyp so I got it out tha waay furst thung. Ohhver."
Czzzzccchhh
"Good on yah Seamus, over-n-out."
Seamus returned the device to his hip.
"Is that thing really necessary?" I asked.
"Yur mate uht uhs. We got fuhfty cuhbuhns here sleeping four hundruhd huhppy cumpers. And if we wanna make sure they stay huhppy we gottah have good communuhcaations."
"How long have you been working at the front line of the tourist industry then?"
"I only been here a few weeks, but Uhm a bit olduur than yer uuvruge truveller, so Ah took ohan a loat oaf responsahbahlahty quickly."
Young Seamus, out in the world, making it. Then he'd return to Galway a well-rounded young gentleman with an armoury of practical skills. Put a shine in his old Ma's eye and catch the eyes of all the local lassies. Until one night he is discovered. "Uh can't hulp myself," he'd plead. "It started in Uuhhstralia. It's abowt the pohwer."
We carried on across the communal area, under a tithe roof giving protection from the sun as much as the infrequent tropical downpours. People sat at tables chatting or catching up on their travel journals. A music video with synths on a beach played on screens above the bar. At the pool tables on the edge of the area, a couple of lads in red Manchester City tops methodically took shots and sipped from plastic pint glasses.
Beyond the pool players a palm-lined path wound away between wooden cabins. People sat in their porches smoking or dozed in hammocks. A girl bearing an armful of laundry stumbled through the door of one of the shacks and the muffled beats of a hip hop track emerged from within.
We stopped on a patch of grass in front of the first grotto and a portacabin office with a Mercedes parked alongside.
"Here y'go," chirped Seamus, clapping me on the back again. "Ernie wuhsn't it?"
"Ernes," I began, but his walkie-talkie crackled again.
He held a hand up and readied the other above the holster, but the radio made no further sound. He graced me with his attention once more.
"Couple of uhmportant things yuh need to know abowt how things wuhrk here. Restaurant's open from suhvuhn till suhvun, servuhng daily speciials. Today's offuhr uhs Lasuuhgna and green salad fuh fiiyve buhcks if you buuy a druhnk worth three or over. Bar's open until the manager's duhscruhtion, which can mean uhnything from eleven o'claack tuhll three in the mornin…"
He droned on, bombarding me with information I'd never need unless I became the kind of person who watched videos, called home, surfed the web, went snorkelling, entered competitions, looked for romance and did my laundry. Suddenly I realised he had stopped and was looking at me expectantly.
"Thank," I began.
The radio grunted and he was off.
"Rahhger that," he said as he strode away, scanning his surroundings with alert eyes that could spot a bed bug or a smoker in an orange zone a hundred metres off.
Unsure what zone I was in, I lit a Marlboro and lay on the grass with my hat pulled across my face. The heat had sucked me dry of energy again.
The fuzzy hip hop from the stereo and the pop from the bar mingled in the air above me, at about the level of the clothes line heaving with underwear fresh off the Oz Express. So this was what you got for fifteen dollars. Still, the place's labyrinthine depths suited my furtive needs. A man could lose himself for days among those cabins, cabbage palms, laundry rooms and unobservant fellow guests. Osama bin Laden was probably holed up in there, leafing through The Muslim Fundamentalist's Guide to the Great Barrier Reef.
I was halfway down the cigarette when someone called over. "Looks like we're both busted smoking in an orange zone."
It definitely wasn't Seamus. I lifted my flowery mask and peered at the owner of the slur, which was more Gladdie than Galway.
Looking over his shoulder as he locked the office door, the stocky man in his late thirties had the beginnings of a mullet spilling on to a maroon shirt with the sleeves rolled up. His jeans were tight fitting and his shoes were smart but could have used a polish. A cigar protruded from his grinning mouth.
"Salright son, you finish yer fag. I won't tell if you don't."
I stared at him with my hat looking like it was itching to slide back over my eyes.
"Spect you'll be getting on the piss tonight," he carried on.
"Maybe, dunno."
"Well we got plenny ah drinks deals on - ten bucks for a jug o' Daquiri!"
He bent towards me and opened a tin of Café Crèmes. "Ere, 'ave one of these to smoke in the bar."
I reluctantly took one and he winked at me.
"Well, party 'ard!" He hit a button on his key ring, sending the Mercedes into a fit of bleeping and flashing.
By the time the man reached the car his mobile had sparked up, sending more electronic signals ringing through the air. He roared away discussing his marketing budget, leaving a smouldering cigar on the gravel and much of the gravel scattered around my camping spot.
I hastily pitched the tent and dived inside. Peering out through the slit down the side of the door, I could see life continuing as normal in the bar. They sat listlessly at the tables, self-conscious young couples and boisterous young men learning the guilty pleasure of drinking through the afternoon. There was nothing for me there. I lay back and stared at the blue walls of the tent.
I tore a banana from the bunch poking out of the dirty socks in my bag, and dug out my notebook. It was time for me to catch up on my diary. I contemplatively mashed the fruit between my teeth and stared at my last entry.

Byron Bay: everybody's surfing... on the waves crashing into their bank accounts from the latest New Age trend they've dreamt up. Nothing further to report.

Reading these entries would give me great pleasure one day.
My eyes turned to the blank facing page and my pen hovered.

Arrived in Airlie. Bought a hat. Hostel extortionate. Nothing further to report.

I crossed it out and tried again.

Running low on funds. May have to sell my stuff/self.

I crossed it out and chewed my biro with my banana-smeared teeth. Time for a new approach. I decisively scribbled on a fresh page.

A tent,
Australia.
Weeks/months after the tearful scene at Heathrow.

Dear Dad,
I am having a fruitful time out here in the wilds, as you said you did as a lad. I am sure I will return to England a new man, well-rounded and able to look life in the eye. The family's problems will be behind us and you will once again be the envy of the neighbourhood.
Alternatively I will starve to death, unless you wire money by return.
Yours etc,
Ernest Ragman.

It struck just the right balance, easing my father in gently by speaking his language. The frank tone was also nicely offset by a few irreverent touches, which would probably fly as far over his head as a weather balloon.
Pleased with my handiwork, I lay back and closed my eyes. It was all black now. I opened them: blue. Black. Blue. How quickly I had become one with the people on the porches.
Black again.
The soundtrack in the bar had moved on to R&B, which collided with the hip hop outside my door. Somewhere Seamus greeted a new group of porch-lubbers.
"… So whur 'uv yuh cum frahm tudaaay?"
"Oh, just Glad…"
Czzzccchhhh
"…. Guest gassed twenny three… wants lift casualty…"
Czzzzcccchhhhhhh
"Raahger…. Ohhver and…"
Out.
Czzzccchhhhh
Czzzccchhhhhhh
Czzzccccccchhhhh

ernest ragman chapter 2 (2004)

Alive &
Well &
Hitching in Queensland


The hunter dropped me outside Bundaberg. The lift had lasted through the night. His left arm was bandaged, partly covering a swathe of tattoos, and to change gear he had to hold the wheel with his knees and reach across with his right hand. He'd injured himself hunting pig, he said.
Next to my rucksack on the back seat lay two rifles and a copy of Bacon Busters.
By the end of the journey he was asking me what he should do about his wife. Did the Lord really mean him to live this way?
"I wouldn't say I'm miserable but I ain't known 'appiness for a long time," he said.
I could only offer him the peace found in silence.
He drove a few kilometres out of his way to drop me on the northern edge of town.
"Cheers," I yelled as I grabbed my bag from the back. Bacon Busters was open at the 'Babes n Boars' section.
He waved with his good arm as he started back the way we'd come. I dropped my bag at my feet and stuck my thumb out.
Another dirty stretch of the Bruce Highway as the sodden heat of the day slithered into the air. I looked like a sleep-deprived murderer and I stood there for some time as the cars shot by. All things considered this was the best way to travel, to keep a low profile, but Jesus that flattened Cane Toad was starting to get depressing.
I was almost surprised when I finally got a bite. The dark brown Holden stopped just past my spot and the driver opened the boot while I jogged up the red dirt siding. I stopped below the snarling top lip of the open trunk and looked at him. Thin grey hair above a thin face with a spud for a nose, T-shirt and shorts that didn't appear to have been changed since they were in fashion. Somehow rodent-like.
"You heading north?"
"Yih, far as Rockie."
He meant Rockhampton. This was the land of the abbreviation.
He blinked at me through his specks. Rockhampton was a good few hundred kilometres away. I slung my bag in and pulled the door shut, sending dust ricocheting to the ground.
We strode round to either side of the front of the car. I paused at the passenger door.
"Giddiiin," he said as he ducked beneath the smouldering roof of his mobile lair.
The inside of the car was like an oven, but not the kind used to make anything appealing. A cassette tape looked about to turn into a puddle on the dashboard and my seat felt like it was packed with burning coals beneath the plastic cover. A breeze came through the open windows when we got going, but it just turned the vehicle into a fan oven.
We also weren't moving fast enough to even have any impact on the guy's sweat-heavy strands of hair, let alone introduce some air conditioning to the car. I looked at the speedometer. We were tearing along at sixty. As we rounded a corner on to a long stretch of straight a car sped up behind us and overtook without a second thought.
"I'll get there same time as you," said the guy.
The other car shrunk into the bleached distance.
"I used to drive trucks," he explained, fiddling with the fan controls so more hot air pumped into the car.
"These cunts are all in such an 'urry, but everyone gits there the same time."
The car descended into what felt like an expectant silence as, outside, the tall leaves of sugar cane fields waved on either side of the road. I felt I had to say something supportive, although I would've loved him to break the seventy mark.
"Plus you get to see more of the countryside this way," I managed.
"I don't give a shit," he replied, the vowels rolling off his tongue like condensation down the side of a cold midi of Tooheys.
That was the problem with hitching. You could never be sure what people wanted out of the in-car conversation. This guy seemed to speak more out of boredom than manners or any pretence of actually giving a shit.
Yet again I found myself wrapped up in issues that should not have troubled a man just trying to mind his own affairs. People were passing prisons and this was a jerry wagon.
Another car flew past us.
The guy flicked two bony fingers. "Fack orfff."
We carried on, the car droning through the folds of heat and silence smothering the highway.
The guy piped up again some time later, scratching the side of his pointed face as he turned slightly in my direction.
"So where y'headed?"
"Airlie Beach."
He laughed grimly. "Yeh I know about yooze bloakes and Airlie Beach."
Then he seemed to catch himself. "I only laughed because I work with you bloakes on the fruit picking and they all go up that way, that's why. I ain't laughing at you or anything."
I'd been considering doing some fruit picking to harvest some readies. Apparently the farms feeding Bundie's belching rum and ginger ale plants were sure sources of income for backpackers and every other itinerant around. They were also rough places to toil for too long, judging by this man's sun-furrowed features and hasty explanation of his mirth at my expense.
But I was forgetting myself. Time to throw another gambit to the hungry conversation beast.
"So have you been to Airlie?" I asked hopefully.
"I been once but I was pissed."
It seemed the beast was easily satiated for now. It would develop an eating disorder at this rate.
We passed a sign: Rockhampton, 350. The speedo hovered around 65.
After a time we stopped at a garage, a forlorn place with a single pump being worked by a two-headed attendant. The small forecourt was riddled with sharp-smelling stains left by spilt oil and petrol that had fast evaporated into the humid air. A toilet sign pointed round the back of the building, where you just knew there'd be a rickety cubicle inhabited by a spider subsisting on Cane Toads and tourists.
"I've got to fill 'er with piss," said the guy, climbing out of our hot metal box.
I got out and watched him approach the baseball cap-clad attendant, wondering if he'd taken his gruffness out on me and would suddenly come over like a Piccadilly dandy.
"Fill 'er up mate," he said, thrusting a crumpled $20 note into the pump-jockey's hairy palm.
It was a reassurance.
Less reassuring was the ungodly cacophony of moans and whirrs emitting from beneath the bonnet. Even the attendant's country calm appeared to be ruffled by the performance, as he raised one bushy eyebrow and hesitated before pushing the pump into the side of the car.
"Is that meant to happen?" I asked the decrepit machine's owner.
He peered back at me through his wonky glasses like an owl that's fallen from its nest and smacked every branch of the tree on the way down. "There ain't nothing wrong with 'er. Owned 'er for years," he snapped, tapping the bonnet with proprietary pride.
"Oh," I said doubtfully. "Look, do you want a drink from the shop?"
I was picking up my hitchers' etiquette as I went along here but I thought it might be an appropriate gesture to offer him something.
"Can if you want but it'll cost ya, this is the only station between 'ere and Gladdie… and I've got some piss in the car."
We pulled back onto the road, the pump attendant's face a moment of detail in the two-tone landscape of white sun and brown shadow. I could've sworn his eyes and mouth flashed wily and aware for a second as the car crawled past his post at the pump, but that was probably just my insistence on filling a blank canvas. We headed on into the treacle of the afternoon.
The guy leant across and yanked at the glove compartment, veering into the other lane as he did so, though of course it all happened at 40 and the nearest oncoming car had just left Townsville. The compartment was empty apart from a bottle wrapped in a brown paper bag, the paper sticking to the glass speaking of the elixir within.
"There's yer piss," he said.
"Are you sure?" I hesitated.
He stared at the road, blinking occasionally at the white glare outside. I pulled the bottle from the paper. It was a large bottle of VB, white trash fuel. Nonetheless my dry gullet welcomed it, and I savoured the last fizzy, sweaty drops in my mouth as I passed the brown bottle to the guy. He took a quick swig and passed it back.
"Never been one for drinkin' at the wheel. Cunts start doin' that when they on a run from Rockie to Sydney and they asleep before they 'it the border."
Ah, the trucking days again. He seemed to be relaxing. Perhaps this lord of the Bruce Highway would soon share his stock of tales from the road.
"That quite a regular run is it then, Rockie to Sydney?" I asked.
"Dunno."
I sighed and looked out my window at the flat landscape, which yielded its stories with the same reluctance. I suppose I should be grateful for this, I thought. It's got to be better than being asked for marital advice. I took a desultory sip of the VB and felt the cool liquid course down my neck. Then another as I examined a passing Gum tree.
"Oi!"
I turned to face the guy, who was staring at me, the car starting to stray towards the wrong lane again. His neck moved in angular spasms and his eyes blinked crazily behind his bottletops.
"Yer a nice cunt yoo are… nickin' all my piss!"
I was busy spluttering, my impending answer already sounding plumby and inadequate, when the engine exploded.
It wasn't a huge explosion and the car wasn't consumed by flames or anything, but there was definitely a bang and there were definitely trails of smoke rising from the bonnet. The car's usual burning smell, of its synthetic innards slowly roasting alongside its human occupants, was overwhelmed by a fiery odour straight from its malfunctioning mechanism. The guy shifted his gaze to the source of the explosion and the road beyond, and not before time because we were straying close to the far edge of the right hand lane. He guided the car across the tarmac to the left verge, stomping the accelerator impotently as the vehicle juddered to a halt.
We sat there as the stench dissipated, like two lab rats recovering from having electrodes clamped to our balls. Finally I ruined the moment of temporary calm - I couldn't help a distasteful sniff. The guy shot me a look, flipped the bonnet and jumped out of the car. He stalked round the front and lifted the bonnet.
I joined him. It didn't look pretty in there. He wiped his brow and frowned at the steaming chambers.
"I don' understand it. I filled 'er up with water 'n' oil this morning and I ain't driven over 70."
I was well aware of the last piece of information.
"How old is this car?"
"Got it sicond 'and."
"When was that?"
"When I packed in the trucks… coupla years ago."
Nothing I could say would help a situation in which we had made an enemy of the glaringly obvious. I went and sat in the shade of a Gum tree and watched a gang of ants the size of poodles foraging between the pale rocks. The guy tentatively reached into the engine for a second before staggering backwards yelling, "Shit!" and waving his right hand uselessly in the warm air, looking like a contorting crash test dummy.
I watched the performance from my cross-legged position atop the roots of the peeling tree. Tears wouldn't have helped, but nor would laughter.
Suck at the marrow of life, live among insects the size of household pets, get a lift from a man in serious need of a spanner. And don't even get me started on his car.
The guy came over and stood scuffing his feet, shifting rubble and raising dust. I stared at his wizened toenails protruding from his worn leather sandals, quickly realised there wasn't anything there to distract me, and looked up at him.
"So what are we going to do?"
"Dunnah."
"Well do you have any breakdown assistance?"
"Yer wha?"
That was it. I leapt to my feet.
"Well, thanks for taking me this far, but I'm afraid you've dug your own grave. I'm getting out of here."
I strode purposefully to the car, which had taken on a distinctly deflated air, and took my rucksack from the boot. As I heaved it on to my back I looked yearningly at a bottle of water lying amid old scraps of newspaper and empty VB bottles. It would have come in handy during the long roadside vigil I now faced, but I didn't trust anything to do with that car. I slammed the boot just as the guy stepped up and shoved his gnarled face in front of mine.
"Yer a nice cunt yoo are!"
"Flattery will get you nowhere."
"Yer wha?"
"Never… nothing. I've got to get hitching now. I've got a long way to go."
I started trudging up the road away from the car. The guy glared at me, the hostility in his eyes crudely magnified by his thick specks, then started rummaging around inside the car. I seemed to have shaken him off. The conversation would suffer but at least I'd stand a chance of picking up a ride.
I positioned myself a comfortable distance from the car. While I wanted to send a firm message to the harbinger of disaster who currently had his head buried in the boot, I could also use the breakdown to present myself as a distressed motorist in need of a lift. Cloaking the more truthful impression of an aimless bum littering the side of the road. I was learning this visual shorthand fast now my passage out of the desert depended on it. I'd never much noticed it before. I'd always sat dead-eyed in the back of my parents' car, presuming all the hopeful hitchers we sped past, no matter how spruced up they were, would be German rock climbers who'd spend long hours telling us how the English sense of humour differed to back in Frankfurt.
Within a few minutes a car appeared at the south end of the straight, its shining bumper growing as it approached along the eternal yellow line. I stuck out a thumb, pushed a nervous hand through my hair, and straightened my back. Grinned.
The motorist slowed to examine the Holden, which suddenly became a Punch and Judy stall for the guy's head as he sprung up from his business in the boot and turned his steely short-sightedness on the passing vehicle. Luckily at that moment I caught the motorist's eye and he headed towards me.
The white Ford stopped and the driver smiled amicably up at me. An honest Aussie type, hair parted from the side, scrubbed features, loved his mother, supported the Brisbane Broncos. "Put your foot down and don't look back you fool," I felt like screaming.
Instead I smiled at his rhetorical question: "Had a spot of bother with the motor?"
"Yes, it would appear so," I laughed.
"Well I can take you up the ro…"
Then he glanced in his wing mirror and Lady Luck was suddenly eloping with my best friend and taking the kids.
"Oh, how about your mate? He wanna lift?"
I looked down the road at the guy, who was now locking up the car.
"Nuh, he wants to stay with the car," I replied.
The man shook his head resignedly. "Right 'o. Well, jump in. That'll teach you to drive an 'olden, but I s'pose a Pom wouldn't know any better…"
A cry suddenly pierced the easy rapport I'd created with Broncos boy and his laid back, mildly racist humour. It was the guy, bearing down on us clutching the last of the VB in one bony hand, and in the other a bulging sports bag with a bottle of Bundie sticking out the top.
"Yer a nice cunt yoo are!"
The driver heard the hoarse oath, his eyes grew as they took in the jagged stick man in his mirror, and he threw the car into gear. The Ford revved away from the kerb and kept going, accelerating fast. Probably not an excessive reaction.
"Yer a nice cunt yoo are, tryin' ta ditch me," said the guy, all pointing fingers and jutting bottlenecks.
"Is that all you can say? Jesus, you're like a stuck record," I shouted back.
"Call yourself an 'itcher," he ploughed on. "When the going gets tough yoo piss orff."
"Look, two of us are never going to get a lift together, especially when one of us looks like a walking mini-bar. I suggest you stay here with that relic of a car and rope some fool into towing you to Rockhampton. I've got my own troubles, and I need to get out of here as fast as I can."
The guy seemed downcast at this. He blinked even more than usual as he glared at me from beneath his bristling eyebrows. His knuckles clasping his worldly goods were white bone with hot red streaks.
"Cunts like you…" he began.
"Look…" I began.
"See, thing is, I got tah see my daughter. It's 'er birthday."
I stared at him.
"She lives in Rockie with 'er mum. Why else do you think I've got a Wednesday orff?"
"I thought you were going there to get pissed."
"Yih, course, but I'll see mah daughter first."
"Well… fine, very noble of you. But we can't hitch together. If you stay here by the car I'll head a couple of hundred metres back down the road.
I figured I could beat him to a lift that way. But it was all academic.
"Nah, I ain't 'itchin' by myself. Not with the nutters on these roads."
"But we could be stood here all day."
"We'll git somethin'. They'll see the 'olden."
I shifted my gaze to the sky above his head, which bobbed like a pea in boiling water. It was a remorseless cobalt blue. The guy lit a cigarette and I think I may even have pouted as I realised I was lumbered with him and his bright orange clipper.
We stood in stony silence, our bags at our feet as we waited for the next sign of human life. Shimmering walls of heat rose from the baking tarmac and a single bird circled overhead. My trusty guidebook told me there were no Vultures in Australia, but I wasn't convinced. The guy slumped on to his hold-all and started polishing off the VB. He offered me the bottle and I declined, with the same sureness that I imagined the next passing stranger would.
A few cars swished by going south. Their occupants tried not to pass judgement but always blew it at the last moment with the same look in their glassy eyes. Afternoon began condensing into evening, streaks of pink materialising in the blue canopy. Cigarette followed cigarette and car followed car out of the north.
Just as I was considering hanging my hammock from that Ghost Gum the horizon blipped and sent a 4X4 up the road. To my surprise the vehicle stopped, though it was travelling at least twice as fast as the guy had. The back tyres spurted dirt at our bags and legs as the 4X4, a charcoal grey Landcruiser with smoked windows, skidded to a halt.
A man jumped out, leaving his door yawning into the highway, and held the boot open for us. He was stocky, with a bare torso covered in tattoos and a black Akubra teetering on his thick head.
"G'day. Chuck yer stuff in," he barked.
The man left us to stow our bags, which we did with nervous glances at each other. Inside, I was forced to sit up front by my kind hitching partner, who jumped in the back and glared at me from above crossed arms.
The driver started accelerating without further ceremony until the speed limit was a distant memory. He lit a Peter Jackson and turned up the stereo. On the CD a group of young African American gentleman expressed doubts about their girlfriends' fidelity and detailed how they planned to extract revenge. It was a celebration of sexual violence.
"Fucking great CD. Friend of mine made it. Really knows his music that cunt," said the driver.
We continued in a silence broken only by the sound of five guys telling each other how they were going to punish their partners for perceived betrayals.
I had to know how long this was going to last.
"So where are you headed?" I asked.
"Townsville."
Looked like I was in for the long haul. I sunk back into my seat and looked around at the aspects of the interior that weren't wearing an Akubra or surreptitiously glugging a bottle of Bundie. The Landcruiser's interior had the worn feel of a vehicle that had already travelled a long way. Crumpled chocolate bar wrappers, empty energy drink cans and crushed cigarette packets littered the floor, suggesting our chauffeur was also feeling a touch ragged on the inside.
"Where have you come from today?" I asked.
The driver lit another cigarette. "Gold Coast."
I did some quick calculations. He'd been driving for 12 hours and had another 12 to go. He squinted and coughed as a fungus of smoke filled the air between us.
"Had an injury at work and been visiting the relies," he explained.
He'd obviously been convalescing a long time and had resorted to desperate measures to fill the listless hours in the Gold Coast's bland landscape of billboards, casinos and, yawn, great beaches. Every patch of flesh you could see on his sweat-dunked torso was covered in fresh tattoos. Most of the tat's seemed to draw on Viking mythology, such as the picture covering his stomach of a ship sailing into a storm with a whiskered fleet staunchly manning the bows.
I wanted to ask him what was with the Viking obsession but I pictured myself taking a trip to Valhalla and my voice limped out with: "Back to work then is it?"
"Yeah."
He watched the uneventful road with the same blank expression as the guy behind him stared at the back of the driver's seat. These two were a match distilled in Bundie.
"What do you do?" I tried again, my voice still wavering.
"I'm a stockman."
The stockman and the fruit picker and me. Jesus.
I turned to my window and gazed at the flat horizon turning red above the baking earth. My eyes felt sore and I began to do a passable impression of the fruit picker. The heat really drained your energy, even if all you were doing was sitting in cars finding endless ways to make conversation.
Suddenly, a few miles up the road, the stockman swerved into the edge of a dark field of towering sugar cane.
I turned to face him. He held a bowie knife, which glinted cruelly above his tight fist.
Before I could offer him my Swiss Army if he wanted to prepare some cheese and biscuits he spat, "I'll give you a five minute 'ead start. Then the 'unt begins."
His voice was even and his jaw clenched. I looked into the back. The fruit picker was wearing a Bundie Rum T-shirt and giving me the thumbs up. I began screaming.
"I ain't even crashed yet," said the stockman.
I opened my bleary eyes and looked around. We were coming into the outskirts of Rockhampton. Roadside posters for motels and the town's one-DJ radio station began replacing the Gum trees. I wiped my hot brow and tried to gulp but my mouth was so dry it was more of a gag. The only bottle I could see was clutched by two greedy talons in the back seat. Liberating the Bundie, I raised it to my scaly lips but stopped short of pouring the fluid.
"Oh… you don't mind do you," I checked.
"Nah. Yooze cunts drink as much piss as you like."
It was an achievement really, making a generous remark sound so much like a threat.
We entered the stretch of roundabouts and streetlights that heralded the next oasis of civilisation. London, Paris and Rockie.
A petrol station appeared ahead. It was a more ambitious structure than the one the fruit picker and I had stopped at, with a huge green sign jutting out the top like the ten-gallon hat on a Texan oil baron. We rolled on to the tarmac forecourt, stopping between a station wagon packed with a farmer's weekly shopping and a ute with a window sticker saying "Brute Ute".
There was a moment's silence while the engine cooled, sounding less panicked than the fruit picker's had.
"Well, this is me: Rockie," announced the fruit picker.
"Righto mate. 'Ave a good night," the stockman said into the driver's mirror.
"I will when I get down the pub."
The laughter that followed was natural and easy. It galled me slightly that these two had bonded after a dozen words, while my continued attempts at conversation ended with me nervously muttering into silence.
I walked the fruit picker to the edge of the forecourt while the stockman filled the Landcruiser. We looked up the footpath that led along the edge of the highway to town, past ramshackle houses with dogs barking and chickens pecking in the yard.
We looked at each other.
"Cheers for annoying the shit outta me," he snapped, and gave me one last flash of his seething eyes before he scurried up the path like a rat that's been at the beer barrel.
Now a new chapter. I looked back at the stockman holding the nozzle into the side of the 4X4. He was going as far north as I needed to go. Surely it was a golden lift. Surely?
The stockman wouldn't accept any petrol money so I bought him a coffee. He took it black with three sugars. We screeched back on to the road and Rockie was soon a distant memory. He sipped on the steaming liquid.
"So what's with walking across Australia?" he said suddenly, in as close to a conversational tone as I'd heard from him.
"Um… oh it's a cheap way to get about."
He looked unconvinced.
"So what's yer name?"
"Ernest."
"Ernest eh? Some a you Pommie cunts got funny names! What's yer surname?"
"Ragman."
"Rag man! Heh, one a the blokes at the station's called that - the Aboriginal 'o clears out the stables."
Rag man. I thought of the way my father pronounced it, Rugmun, like he'd just had a sharp object surgically implanted in his rectum. That land of Pot Noodles and roundabouts seemed a long way away. As far away as the womb, which had been about the most eventful part of my life before I boarded the flight to this oversized floater in the South Pacific. And now my life was exciting… what? Maybe it was time for a cup of tea. And remember how I like my toast buttered Mother.
I spent much of the journey engrossed in such thoughts, spiralling into my inner world as surely as the car was sucked in by the somehow sentient darkness. Every now and then the stockman would disturb me with a grunt, or I'd suddenly remember the situation I was in and jolt into uneasy awareness of my brooding surroundings.
The broken digits on the car clock said 10 o'clock, midnight, one o'clock. The speedo hovered between 140 and 150. The trees and undergrowth looming out of the night started to remind me of the opening scene of a Scooby Doo cartoon.
"Things are beginning to look pretty tropical," I commented.
"Yep, this is where it starts to get real interesting," came the reply from the darkness. "Real troppo."
"Troppo," I laughed at this latest abbreviation.
"Yeah, troppo. That's what we used to call it in the Territory. One day, 'bout this time of year, this cunt on the station, nice enough bloake, fuckin' lost it and did 'imself in. Gone troppo 'e 'ad."
Just then catalogue of domestic violence on the radio came to an end.
Even its owner had heard enough after six listens. "There's some good road music in there," he said, pointing at the glove box.
I opened the compartment and reached into grab the CD. Next to it lay a bowie knife, unsheathed and glinting as cruelly as was possible in the low light coming from the dashboard.
My hand froze for a second and the hesitation didn't go unnoticed.
"Ah you found my guilty secret."
"What?"
"I like a bit of 'unting."
"What do you… what do you hunt?"
"Pig - keep your eyes sharp and you'll see some. The pests need to be wiped out - imported they are, like yooze Poms!"
He laughed jovially and I joined in, while estimating how long it would take me to unfasten my seat belt and roll out the door.
"Wanna play the CD then?"
I wiped the sweat from my palm off its shiny surface and pushed it into the stereo. It was Australian country. At the first this was a welcome relief from the rap, but it soon transpired that the guitar twanger was about as White Supremacist as the rappers had been Black Power. The crackly songs spoke fondly of a simple, honest place where men where men, animals were animals, and women, homosexuals and blackfellas were also animals. This place was probably somewhere near the cattle station my travelling companion had worked on in the Northern Territory.
It was a strange world this stockman came from really, about as alien as the western world got to my homeland. My curiosity got the better of my abject terror.
"So have you always been a stockman?"
"Yeah, worked on stations all over the Territory and Queensland since I was 15."
"What's it like living somewhere so remote? I mean, what do you… what do you do at night?"
"Dunnah, watch TV, 'it the grog, the usual really. The nearest boozer's a good thirty clicks away."
I pictured the moths at the lightbulb, the cards on the table, the mouths open in laughter. As the night leered outside the windows.
Suddenly, a few musical Mein Kampfs later, we swerved into the side of a field. I clenched so fast I may have left a permanent ridge in his seat.
"Better get some shut-eye. I was fallin' asleep back there."
And… relax.
The sudden silence made the humming night outside seem all the more eerie. I curled up in my seat and tried to copy the snorting, scratching body beside me but it was impossible to get comfortable in this heat. I wound down a window but that just made it worse. First one then a couple of thousand mosquitoes swarmed through the gap. They started biting and the scratching next to me intensified. Suddenly the stockman sprung up and sparked up the ignition in one angry movement.
"Black bastards!" he exclaimed.
I quietly wound the window up as we revved back on to the road. He hit the speed limit within seconds, and kept right on.
Two o'clock came and went. The road was straight for as far as you could see and as long as you could remember. The CD finished and we sat in a silence broken only by his occasional slurp on a bottle of whatever branded sugar solution he was on now. We carried on into the night as surely as the whiskered fleet on his stomach headed into the storm. As I watched his eyes flicker I realised he'd now been driving for over 20 hours. The conversation game had taken on sinister new dimensions.
"So," I said, thinking quickly. "Are those tattoos new? They look quite fresh."
"Yeah, got them on the Goldie. They was a coupla days' work for the bloake that did 'em and a coupla months wages for me."
He went on to talk me through the various designs and their meanings, and his plans to add to them.
"… that's a Demon and that's 'is Demon Sheila…. Gonna put a Viking battle there…"
It was enough to get him through the last part of our journey together. Sometime before three the headlights picked out a sign saying the turn-off for Airlie Beach was ahead, in a town called Prosperpine.
"Yeah, Prossie, that's 'im," confirmed the stockman.
We screeched to a halt in front of a row of darkened bungalows. He leapt out to open the boot, leaving his door yawning into the highway as he had done all those hours ago. His tattoed torso was a ghostly white and blue form in the moonlight.
"Well, good luck with the rest of the drive," I said.
Looking at his face in the red lights I suddenly realised he was younger than he seemed, probably not many years older than me. He gave me a cursory "Cheers" and that was it, the red lights were shrinking into the darkness. I trudged on up the road looking for the centre of town, if such a thing existed.
Not many years older than me, but he'd been a stockman for a lifetime already. Different to everyone I'd ever known, sure, but basically just a guy looking for some chat to help him through the night. Well I failed him there: too terrified; and me with blood on my hands. Still, at least I was still alive. At least we both were.
There was a town centre. It was a petrol station. I found a small public park and pitched my tent in the corner, in a concealed spot behind a bush. I positioned the tent so the door was hard up against a low wall, a precaution against the marauding night terrors this land seemed ready to hurl my way. Any onlookers who saw the tent with my bulging rucksack pinning me against the wall would think I was sharing the space with other people, perhaps a pair of nubile Swedish backpackers I'd charmed into chauffeuring me all the way from Byron Bay. "Ernest, your map-reading skills are aaawesome!" You'd be lucky. Still, as I dug my sleeping bag out and unrolled it, I contemplated that this camping spot had been a lucky find; even if such turns of fortune did seem rather like a man who's fallen into a disused wishing well finding pennies at the bottom. It was like a sauna in here and already I could feel the sleeping bag bringing a heat rash out on my legs. I pushed my hands under my neck and listened to the silence around me. Hopefully there'd be more of that to come, once I'd done what had to be done in Airlie Beach.

ernest ragman chapter 1 (2003)

Don't Call Me Dude


Twenty years old.
Twenty years old and climbing off a bus somewhere on the east coast of Australia. Byron Bay to be exact. All the guidebooks told me to come here, everyone I met. I simply had to come.
The coach pulled away, the tourists scattered. I crossed the road and went into the ticket centre, which had some chirpy name designed to hook travellers, backpackers and other fools. Bearing in mind the likely disappointment to come, I wanted to find out when the last bus left town.
Inside, between posters advising me to 'Go for it with a Greyhound 60-day pass!' and 'Climb aboard the Byron Express for the ride of a lifetime!', the desk was manned by a good-time blonde in a crisp white T-shirt. I stood with my rucksack dragging my shoulders and waited for her to finish on the phone. It was hard not to eavesdrop on her Anzac twang. The conversation was split between last night and tonight. I pretended to study the deals screaming at me from the walls. Shafts of sunlight hit the tile floor like blinding glimpses of heaven.
Eventually she put the phone down and directed her enthusiasm towards me.
"How can I help you?"
"When's the last bus out of here?"
"Which direction?"
"North I guess."
I'd been travelling north so far. If it ain't broke.
She scanned her computer screen.
"The night bus to Cairns leaves at quarter past midnight." She looked at me and her lips exploded into a smile. "But once you've seen Byron Bay, you'll never wanna leave!"
I stowed my backpack with the freakish cult member and headed into town. Towards the ocean.
You arrive in these places, on your way from nowhere to nowhere, and you don't really know what to do with yourself. You end up following a formula, finding jobs to fill your time. Little chores: sort out bus ticket, stash bag, get bearings, change currency, eat. Like travelling was supposed to be about spontaneity, sucking at the marrow of life. In between the jobs you create for yourself, your relaxation follows set patterns too. Find the ocean, drink coffee and observe it, swim in it, drink beer and observe it. So the days pass. And you crawl up the side of Australia.
You begin to wonder why you even came. I remember my father as he saw me off at Heathrow. His wave as I disappeared towards customs. Half way between a victorious fist in the air for the young man beginning an exciting journey and a final farewell to someone taking a long walk into the woods.
"Have a good time over there," he said, almost imploringly, as we shook hands. We didn't talk about how it was him who'd bought me the one-way plane ticket out here. We'd already discussed it, at length, and presumably I was meant to give it some thought during the 24-hour flight to Sydney.
I stopped outside a money change place. Chore number two. I went inside and slapped a wad of tenners down on the counter. The man picked them up and counted, teasing and shuffling with a well-practised fluidity. I eyeballed him: side parting, white shirt open at the collar. As formal as it gets in a beach town on the Pacific. He looked up, his eyes full of the strange joy Australians seem to derive from communication.
"Won't get many dollars for your pound today I'm afraid," he said. "The Aussie dollar's been on the rise for days. It's gone from being worth 60 American cents to 70 in just a week. It's ripping along!"
He beamed at me. How was I supposed to respond to this?
I managed to string something vaguely appropriate together. "Harsh. I mean good for you but… so how much will I get for this 50 pounds?"
"Let's see, the rate's 2.41, so that's double plus a bit: 120.50. Would've been a good 130 last week you see. Then take away our seven dollar charge: 113.50. Okay?"
His eyes lifted from his calculator and flooded with confusion when they confronted the frown that had crept across my face.
I took the meagre bills and returned to the bright street. Put my sunglasses on, resumed my forward trudge.
The dollar is ripping along, the pound is crumbling. Doesn't that just sum it all up? The Aussies: the happy-go-lucky beach people with their fine lifestyle and their healthy bodies. And the Brits: losers in the rain. But fuck it, I'll stick with the Brits anytime. Call me wilfully obtuse, an inbred product of the old world. But I know what I believe.
You could almost taste the heat on the street. It tasted of dust and sea salt. The town was in its grip. The place seemed stifled, like its people had abandoned everything they were doing when summer sleepily rolled in.
I paused outside one of the shops with the glare of the sky bouncing off their windows. The line of neighbouring stores also giving out glassy reflections continued as far as I could see. I imagined their progress beyond that: coiling around corners and over hills in a quest to reach the ocean. The shops' proprietors and all their wares reaching for the cool sea. In the thrift store, the unnaturally long Gola trainers in an outdated style want nothing more than to run through the surf. Next door, the '60s records in the hippyish music emporium would love to be skimmed across the glittering waves by a firm hand, not to rest until they reach deep waters and sink. The yearning lessens as you head along the line, until you reach the very last shop. Not only does that shopkeeper have the commercial boon of a seafront location, but his blue salvation is always in sight.
My vision was blurred and the sweat swam on my forehead. I was beginning to worry about my own salvation. Without further thought, I ducked through the nearest door.
It was an Aboriginal art shop. The place could've been a kebab joint for all I'd cared in my desperation to escape the sun. But as my eyes became accustomed to the shadowy interior, I picked out the strange designs I'd previously only seen in books. There were stacks of thick bright rugs, tables of wooden musical instruments, shelves of photo-journals about whiteys' forays into the desert, piles of pointillist paintings, baskets of boomerangs.
A voice came from the back of the shop.
"How y'goin? Can I help you there?"
I tensed. Here comes another individual with a pathological need for conversation, I thought.
The woman came round the desk and glided down the shop towards me, sandals swishing below long skirt. Beneath her mousy hair and lively eyes in one of those female faces that seem impossibly small, a beaded necklace hung above a loose shirt. She was too old for me, maybe in her late twenties, but you could tell she had a good body beneath her gyppo gear. Probably a pillar of the local yoga class.
She smiled inquiringly and tried to catch my eye. "You just browsin', or lookin' for somethin' in particular?"
I was tempted to ask for a donna with extra chilli sauce. Instead I waved at the bleached light outside and said, "It's a more a question of what I'm escaping from."
She laughed. "That's okay. You can take refuge in here."
Of course, it would be okay. It would be, like, totally cool. I picked up a boomerang and examined the turquoise lizard painted on its side. It was flat and simple but full of personality.
"So what's with this stuff?" I asked.
"What's with it? Well… the Aborigines believe in the spirits of nature. The Australian landscape and its animals are important spiritual symbols to them, which is why you get designs like the one you're holding there. It all relates back to the Dreamtime. They believe their ancestors walked across Australia on the Songlines, singing the world into existence. They can look at a rocky outcrop in northern Queensland or a grassy hillock in Victoria and tell you what song, what story, lies behind it."
She looked at me expectantly. I dropped the boomerang back in the wicker basket with a clatter. Her sales speel had clearly just skimmed the surface of a deep subject. In the same way, this shop was obviously a cynical exploitation of an ancient culture.
"I bet you pay them a pittance for their work don't you?" I said. "I bet your mark-up after you've bunged them some beer money is a good couple of thousand percent."
"No," she replied, an earnest expression wrinkling her features. "This is a co-operative, which means we sell the art on their behalf and take a commission. I can understand your concern though. Some dealers have treated the Aboriginal artists very unfairly, but those days are over now."
Would nothing phase this woman? She must either have been brainwashed by her yoga guru, or be lacing her herbal tea with valium. I gave up on baiting the new ager and made a bid for the exit, before she could hit me with another well-rounded opinion.
As the door swung behind me she called, "Enjoy your stay in Australia. I hope you find your own Songline!" Not a trace of irritation. Surely pickled with valium.
Squinting in the sun again, I lit myself a cigarette to help me to the beach. I had a whole stack of death sticks in my bag. So many shop monkeys here insisted on humiliating me by demanding ID, I'd eventually splashed out with the first person who'd had the decency to just serve me.
I dragged my feet along the pavement. Finally the sea came into view, a flat clean expanse at the end of Byron's jutting buildings. I stubbed out my cigarette on the wall of a homeopathic remedies centre and continued along the street, which began to slope towards the beach.
The Dreamtime. The Songlines. Kind of interesting. Maybe I would find something to sink my teeth into there, away from the Anglicised havens on the east coast. That woman though. I walked past a café called Peace & Latté. This town though.
I hit the beach. No one there was over 25. No one there had over 25 brain cells. It was like a Billabong catalogue, or a poster for The Chippendales. Young men played soccer on the sand, dreads swinging in the sea breeze and tanned six-packs circling each other in the physical game. Their floozies lounged nearby, all languorous cigarettes, aloof expressions behind sunglasses and pert breasts on show. Out at sea, a surfer was towed through the churning waves by a blue kite arcing in the even bluer sky. Fuck knows what that sport's called. Another surfer, a character with a blond goatee and unnecessarily long orange shorts, brushed past me as he hurried towards the tide line grasping his board. He had to work in Peace & Latté and this had to be his lunch break. That would be too perfect not to be true. In most places it would be too good to be true, but I could see this town was uncommonly blessed. These people's dreams had all come true. They were living out the wild fantasies of a 25 brain cell wonder.
I backed away from the sea, fearing I would be forced to undergo some kind of cool-test to be allowed in the surf. Up at the wind breaker running between the beach and the dune grass I spotted one of the few punters breaking the under-25 rule. The unevenly shaved old boy in a floppy hat lay furtively against the ramshackle wooden fence and eyed the platter of topless bodies around him. He had the look of a child checking out his presents on Christmas morning, almost confused that the world could offer such excruciating joy.
He and I were kindred spirits, I realised with a shock. We were both outsiders here. The difference was he wanted to belong - to do more than look on from the sidelines - whereas I didn't care.
I thought about it as I continued along the sand, blocking out the clichéd cries of the bare-footed soccer stars and making for the emptier end of the beach. There was a lighthouse dead ahead, standing fresh and white above the thick swathe of forest covering the hills. Australia's most easterly point according to my guidebook.
Suddenly my thoughts, echoing around my head like the sun bouncing off the ground, were interrupted by a chirpy call. "No need to look so serious mate. It'll probably never happen. Nothing round here ever does." The shrill gag had come from a brunette sitting on the near edge of a circle of people with a lager-laden esky in the middle. I diverted my course towards where she sat genially waving the neck of her Tooheys New at me. Maybe it would be okay to find some temporary acceptance here. Just to taste it. Though I knew I'd cleanse my mouth of it the following morning, when I drank from a cold stream and resumed my solitary pilgrimage into the mountains.
I smiled.
"You're right, I was lost in thought there. It's too easy to space out under a sky like this," I said, gesturing at the blue heavens. My arm looked very white in comparison with the ring of bronzed shoulders below me. "So does nothing really ever happen here?"
"Oh we make our own entertainment," she said, and raised a feline eyebrow. "What's a man with an interesting accent like you doing here anyway?"
I told her all about it, embellishing everything that'd happened since Sydney and leaving out the bit before I stepped on the plane. A few of the neighbouring bodies swivelled their heads to listen to my tale, then returned to the easy comfort of the familiar faces around them. But she listened intently, watching my profile as I turned to face her or to consider the sunny view with the distant look of someone recalling great memories. She contemplatively brushed back a strand of brown hair that had fallen down her face and on to her breasts. The sand squeaked as she shifted her weight. The rest of the circle seemed like distant islands in an ocean of conversations.
"… He ended up chasing me round town demanding I pay back the Gin I'd drunk. I gave him the slip and jumped the next Greyhound out of there. Which is more or less how I arrived here," I concluded, with just the right air of modest understatement. I was crouching beside her now. I waited for her to speak, although I knew her story would be a lot simpler. You could read it in the smile hanging between her dimpled cheeks.
"Well well," she said, then pointed at my straining knees. "You can sit down if you like."
It was going so well it had to take a sudden, rapid turn for the worse. Even in Byron. Hearing the girl's invitation, one of the characters who'd listened briefly to my anecdotes turned to us. A self-satisfied surf moron with spiky hair and an accent like a dustbin lid in a storm, he quipped, "Hey you might as well give the guy a beer and a cushion as well."
His tone was sarcastic and his voice hammered my ears like rocks thrown by an angry mob. All the girl could do was betray her embarrassment with a chuckle. I rose to my feet and bid her a cursory goodbye. As I walked away I heard her splutter, "Wait… come back…" while he murmured, "Touchy bastard."
I didn't stop though. I kept on ploughing up that white sand.
They were just a distraction anyway. I wasn't looking for company. I mean, hanging out with them would have defeated the only good thing about being in this stinking country: not having to answer to anybody but myself. If I wanted to split, I could. And I could do it in the way I chose, which was lucky because I had stuff to do. I had to… to take a look at Australia's most easterly point. Yes, that was it, Australia's most easterly point. That lighthouse on the cliff with the empty Pacific stretching away below.
I left the beach and headed up the hill towards the forest, crossing a car park where the odd person milled around a dusty car preparing to hit the sea. A guy with hair like moss hanging by a waterfall sat on the back bumper of his camper van pulling on a wet suit.
"G'day mate," he slurred.
I showed him the fire bombs in my eyes.
On into the forest. I picked up a path shimmying around the thick trunks. Apart from the occasional shriek of a cockatoo, a thick canopy of late afternoon silence covered the wood. Dust particles and shards of leaf span lazily in the beige beams filtering between the trees. It felt good to be away from the hot beach and the people on it.
I reached the top of the headland and stopped at a look out point to catch my breath. You could see around the corner and down another section of the coast from here. It looked how Thailand appears in glossy tourist brochures, as if reality had been photo-shopped. Endless beaches drifted away to the south-west, arcing like gangly crescent moons between the turquoise ocean and the dense forest. I lit a cigarette and coughed as the first mouthful of exhaled smoke spiralled away in the cliff-top wind. Another solitary observer stood nearby drinking in the scene. A beatific expression had spread across his weathered, pierced face like sunshine warming a landscape. The lobotomy: one moment of pain for a lifetime of bliss. "Join us, it's so painless," these people seemed to whisper.
Over at the lighthouse, tourists eagerly recorded the scene with a variety of lenses. The heavy clicks and smooth whirrs of optical and digital cameras echoed up and down the footpaths at the base of the silently towering building. I sat on a freshly mown patch of grass covered in conservation notices and looked on. One of the signs said you could see Dolphins leaping in the waves from there, but I was busy watching the diverse passers-by. Asian families sauntered along the walkways, English couples climbed the wooden steps, local fishermen with serious-looking rods strode towards the rocks below, a European hiker with reflective shades stopped and glugged on his water bottle. All could add ticks to their identical lists of things to see and do: Australia's eastern-most point, consumed. A middle aged Japanese man brandishing a Canon caught my eye and timidly looked away. I wondered what he thought of this land, whether it was as alien to him as it was to me.
Then, just as I was starting to relax, the girl from the beach reappeared. She was heading down the track towards me. What did she want? Would she try to make me join them? She hadn't clocked me yet but she would soon. It was seconds away. I considered diving into a bush but figured that would just draw attention. Instead I sat tight and self-consciously tried to pretend I hadn't spotted her. Seconds later she spotted me.
"Hey it's the mystery man from the beach," she exclaimed, with what was surely feigned surprise.
She flopped down next to me, all tanned arms and legs for a second.
"Sorry about Aaron earlier," she said. "He can be a bit of a wise-arse but he's okay really."
"Nah nah it was fine," I assured her, with what was surely icy politeness. "I wanted to get down here anyway."
She looked at me for a moment before shifting her gaze out to sea. The sunset light show was beginning and we had prime seats.
"I always come up here in the evening. I'm meant to be organising for a house party we're throwing tonight, but I had to come up for a few minutes. It's so beautiful," she sighed.
She was right, I had to admit. "You wouldn't see a view like this back home."
"Unless you climbed one of the mountains on Skye."
I darted her a surprised glance and she laughed. "I lived in Britain for a year, in Brighton and Glasgow."
"You avoided the usual London-Edinburgh cliché then."
"Well, I wanted to do something different…"
She trailed off and seemed to consider the fiery canvas before us for inspiration. Then added, "So I've done the whole cultural exchange the other way round I guess."
So that meant she could empathise I suppose. She knew what I was going through. Join us. I laughed.
"So do you have any plans for while you're in Byron?" she asked.
"Nope."
"Do you have any plans at all?"
"Nope."
We just sat there for another few minutes. The silence was uncomfortable now. I found myself trying to think of something to say. Why did people foist these situations on you?
She got up to leave. "Well, I guess I better get back home to help the girls set up for the party."
She looked down at me and hesitated. She seemed to be about to say something but to think better of it.
"See you then," she said. "I hope you find what you're looking for out here."
"Oh I'm sure I will. Good luck."
I watched the gentle wave of her hips as she walked away. The fires in my eyes had gone out.
Back into the forest. I charged down a steep path leading to the encroaching tide below. The trees were black lines against the flaring sky. The flaming panorama that had so mesmerised the girl and I was settling into a subtler mix of pastel shades. My thoughts were dwelling on my recent encounter and the realisations popping into my brain drove my feet forward. Before she came along I was perfectly content. All I achieved by speaking to her was doubt in my heart. The only conclusion was that other people were prison sentences. The man who could escape them, who could embrace solitude, would be happy and free.
I emerged on to a rocky part of the shore. The water crashed and fizzed at my feet. I took off my shoes and socks and leapt between the larger stones. The smaller rocks gave a tumbling crackle as the retreating waves dragged them sea-wards. Then, as I rounded a corner, I spied the beach again: a place where I would indeed be happy by myself. It was empty, apart from a few surfing silhouettes and a handful of sunset-watchers at the far end near town. The sand seemed to glow with the day's heat, and the evening tide rushed to cool and cover it for the long night ahead. I quickened my pace and soon reached the beginning of the beach, which felt like a warm, smooth blanket after the spiky rocks. There was a slight breeze, which freshened my sun-baked skin without bringing on a chill. And no one around. Once again, I seemed to have stepped into a photo-shopped postcard.
I had to go for a swim. There was no question about it, despite the advice scrawled in marker pen on the back of a signpost: "Warning! Beach becomes very crowded here. Be prepared to be super-cool!" I tend to disregard anything telling me to be "super-cool" and in any case, the scene before me was far from crowded. The nearest surfer was surely a safe distance away. I stripped down to my boxer shorts, dumped my clothes above the glistening tide line and streaked into the sighing waves.
The water had the warmth of the sub-tropics, a far cry from the sub-zero Atlantic I'd forced myself into on holidays in Britain. It calmed me like a bedtime bath and washed the prickly sweat from my body. I could feel badness leaving and goodness entering. It was that simple. I lay on my back kicking water for a time, staring at the pink-tinged clouds above and enjoying the feel of the cool depths heaving against my underside. Then I turned over and swam beneath the surface. It was too gloomy to see anything down there, so I closed my eyes and sank into the sense of floating in the dark; alone. The only feeling in my body came from the pull of the waves. I felt like a brain placed in suspended animation, while mankind awaited the scientific leap that would allow my mighty thinking machine to be shackled to a lucky new body.
All was as it should have been. Soon my lungs began to protest and I drifted up through the swish and soak to the surface. My damp head broke back into the world and I gulped the air. I decided not to open my eyes for a second so I could absorb this moment through every sense. It had to be the best moment of the many I'd found myself living through these last months. I smelt the tang of the sea, I heard the heavy racket of crickets in the bush back on land. I heard the breeze skimming the tops of the waves, I heard… a new noise. The sound of something rapidly cutting through the surf.
I was just opening my eyes when the thing, whatever it was, smashed into the side of my head, into the right side of my temple. The impact sent me whirling through the water, downing a lung-full before emerging spluttering to the surface. My system was haemorrhaging with panic. The outside world reeled in front of me, sky dashing against sand against sea. I felt like I was seeing it all through a telescope. When I gathered myself I found I was lying in the shallow water with a dull pain pulsating like an electric current in the side of my head.
I climbed unsteadily to my feet. A surfer stood nearby, his board bobbing at his feet. The obvious culprit. He unfastened the strap from his tattooed ankle and walked over, trailing his logo-covered weapon behind him.
"You okay dude?" he asked.
I realised it was the guy who'd wished me "G'day" in the car park, his thick moss hair now pasted against his skull. Despite the fact he'd just brained me, his voice was as syrup-slow as before.
"Why the fuck don't you look where you're going?" I snapped.
"Sorry dude. I tried to warn you. I yelled out but you'd gone under. Then I changed my course, but I didn't know where you'd come up. When you did come up you were so close I didn't even have time to shout."
"That's bollocks. You were more concerned with 'riding a break' or 'rolling a carpet' or whatever it is you twats call it. Do you think you own this ocean or something?"
He tried to interrupt but I ranted on.
"Just because you scribble fatuous things on the backs of signs, does that give you the right not to watch the fuck out?"
I felt dizzy and I paused to catch my breath. Silence fell for a second as he watched me gasping and guerning with his dead eyes. The shallows lapped at our feet, gently rocking the offending board lying between us.
Eventually he spoke. "Like I said dude, I'm sorry. It was a bad accident and it sounded like you took a nasty crack to the head. But you seem to be alive and in one piece, and you're saying some pretty heavy shit, so I'm gonna go back to the surf now."
He leant down to pick up his board, which lurked at his feet like the silent menace it was.
"Listen, you hippy in a wetsuit, you think you can fob me off that easily?" I stormed. "You damn nearly killed me. Most people have brains in their heads you know, and they're delicate organs."
He froze with his hand reaching downwards, then slowly bent back up and looked me in the eye.
"No you listen to me, you rude son of a bitch. It was an accident okay."
He walked towards me, his chest straining against his tight wetsuit.
"And, quite honestly dude, you have a responsibility to look where you're going as well. This is primarily a surfing spot and swimmers have to watch out for the surfers. If you don't know the rules of the water you should stay out of it. Next time stick to the beach eh dude, and work on tanning that pasty skin."
It was the final insult. Before I knew what I was doing, I'd snatched his board and I was swinging it at his head with the full force of unleashed rage.
"I don't want a tan," I cried as the torpedo hit home. "And stop calling me dude."
He staggered backwards with his head in his hands, too shocked to come out with an arrogant retort now. In a split second I was on him again. I turned the board round and used the blunt, wide end to drop him properly. He collapsed face downwards in the surf. I kept pounding and bludgeoning, thrashing and crushing. To begin with he groaned and even managed to say, "Stop, please" at one point, his words choked by water and blood. But then he seemed to just give in, and his body relaxed. I couldn't pinpoint the exact moment he became an ex-surfer, but eventually I realised there were no more air bubbles worrying the water around his mouth. My screaming blows had become methodical afterthoughts by then anyway. I was out of breath. I turned the board around again, so I was clutching the back end of the white weapon, and I threw my remaining energy into a grand finale. Standing strong like a workman and driving the board like a crowbar, I made sure his cranium would never forget me. The white nose cracked into his temple, near the point where it had hit me all that time ago. All the momentum in the blow was channelled through that narrow point. It let out a sky-splitting "crack" as the rushing hammer found its hard target. I stood back panting and looked at the object at my feet. Streaks of blood ran from its mouth, which was half buried in the seabed, and produced a growing red cloud. The long blond hair fanned out from its traumatised roots and lay atop the bloody mess, reaching into the darkening sea like fingers of coral.
I dropped the board beside the limp, useless form and looked around. The beach was empty. I hurried over to my clothes and got dressed, then started towards town. The only trace of evening left in the curdled sky was the scarlet streaks between the cool grey clouds. The night was bringing a strong wind and the seagulls screeched as they tried to hold steady above the bending palms.
Obviously it was best to leave, which was fine by me. I didn't want to stay here anyway. There were a few hours to kill before the midnight coach. I wandered up and down the three or four main streets, which were as empty in the night as they had been in the midday heat. The occasional person rushed past, pulling their hemp shirt closed against the incoming sou' wester like it was the worst disaster Byron had ever known. A drunken Aborigine sat on a bench slurring.
Deciding to follow suit and knock myself out for the long journey ahead, I went into a hotel bar. Poppy indie bounced off the wood panelled walls and buxom serving wenches dodged between the crowded tables. I sat at the bar and gazed vacantly at the music video flashing from a screen on the wall. I tapped my foot to the dishevelled band's angsty choruses - I owned one of their less commercial albums - but at the same time I found their music to be a shallow, stunted reflection of the world.
A barmaid approached.
I waved a ten dollar note at the taps. "I'll have a beer please."
"I'm going to need to see some ID first."
I groaned and reached for my wallet. It didn't matter. None of it did. It was all rather funny actually.
She handed my driving licence back. "Sorry about that…"
"It's okay. I'll have a beer, any beer."
A few lagers later, I staggered to the coach station. The steam-pressed chick was still there, her inane grin still in place after a day on the job. She was just finishing a phone call when I stepped up to the desk to get my bag back.
"You gonna tear yerself away from Byron then?" she quipped, as I placed my rucksack with the rest of the luggage waiting to be loaded on to the Greyhound.
I stopped at the door. "That's right," I said. "I guess it just wasn't my kind of place."
I continued outside and climbed on to the silently waiting night bus.