The Wasp Factory

4: The Bomb Circle

OFTEN I've thought of myself as a state; a country or, at the very least, a city. It used to seem to me that the different ways I felt sometimes about ideas, courses of action and so on were like the differing political moods that countries go through. It has always seemed to me that people vote in a new government not because they actually agree with their politics but just because they want a change. Somehow they think that things will be better under the new lot. Well, people are stupid, but it all seems to have more to do with mood, caprice and atmosphere than carefully thought-out arguments. I can feel the same sort of thing going on in my head. Sometimes the thoughts and feelings I had didn't really agree with each other, so I decided I must be lots of different people inside my brain.

For example, there has always been a part of me which has felt guilty about killing Blyth, Paul and Esmerelda. That same part feels guilty now about taking revenge on innocent rabbits because of one rogue male. But I liken it to an opposition party in a parliament, or a critical press; acting as a conscience and a brake, but not in power and unlikely to assume it. Another part of me is racist, probably because I've hardly met any colored people and all I know of them is what I read in papers and see on television, where black people are usually talked of in terms of numbers and presumed guilty until proved innocent. This part of me is still quite strong, though of course I know there is no logical reason for race hatred. Whenever I see coloured people in Porteneil, buying souvenirs or stopping off for a snack, I hope that they will ask me something so that I can show how polite I am and prove that my reasoning is stronger than my more crass instincts, or training.

By the same token, though, there was no need to take revenge on the rabbits. There never is, even in the big world. I think reprisals against people only distantly or circumstantially connected with those who have done others wrong are to make the people doing the avenging feel good. Like the death penalty, you want it because it makes you feel better, not because it's a deterrent or any nonsense like that.

At least the rabbits won't know that Frank Cauldhame did what he did to them, the way a community of people knows what the baddies did to them, so that the revenge ends up having the opposite effect from that intended, inciting rather than squashing resistance. At least I admit that it's all to boost my ego, restore my pride and give me pleasure, not to save the country or uphold justice or honour the dead.

So there were parts of me that watched the naming ceremony for the new catapult with some amusement, even contempt. In that state inside my head, this is like intellectuals in a country sneering at religion while not being able to deny the effect it has on the mass of people. In the ceremony I smeared the metal, rubber and plastic of the new device with earwax, snot, blood, urine, belly-button fluff and toenail cheese, christened it by firing the empty sling at a wingless wasp crawling on the face of the Factory, and also fired it at my bared foot, raising a bruise.

Parts of me thought all this was nonsense, but they were in a tiny minority. The rest of me knew this sort of thing worked. It gave me power, it made me part of what I own and where I am. It makes me feel good.

I found a photograph of Paul as a baby in one of the albums I kept in the loft, and after the ceremony I wrote the name of the new catapult on the back of the picture, scrunched it up around a steelie and secured it with a little tape, then went down, out of the loft and the house, into the chill drizzle of a new day.

I went to the cracked end of the old slipway at the north end of the island. I pulled the rubber almost to maximum and sent the ball-bearing and photograph hissing and spinning way out to sea. I didn't see the splash.

The catapult ought to be safe so long as nobody knew its name. That didn't help the Black Destroyer, certainly, but it died because I made a mistake, and my power is so strong that when it goes wrong, which is seldom but not never, even those things I have invested with great protective power become vulnerable. Again, in that head-state, I could feel anger that I could have made such a mistake, and a determination it wouldn't happen again. This was like a general who had lost a battle or some important territory being disciplined or shot.

Well, I had done what I could to protect the new catapult and, while I was sorry that what had happened at the Rabbit Grounds had cost me a trusted weapon with many battle honours to its name (not to mention a significant sum out of the Defence budget), I thought that maybe what had happened had been for the best. The part of me which made the mistake with the buck, letting it get the better of me for a moment, might still be around if that acid test hadn't found it out. The incompetent or misguided general had been dismissed. Eric's return might call for all my reactions and powers to be at their peak of efficiency.

It was still very early and, although the mist and drizzle should have had me feeling a little mellow, I was still in good and confident spirits from the naming ceremony.

I felt like a Run, so I left my jacket near the Pole I'd been at the day Diggs had come with the news, and tucked the catapult tightly between my cords and my belt. I tugged my boots to running tension after checking my socks were straight and unruffled, then jogged slowly down to the line of hard sand between the seaweed tidelines. The drizzle was coming and going and the sun was visible occasionally through the mist and cloud as a red and hazy disc. There was a slight wind coming from the north, and I turned into it. I powered up gradually, settling into an easy, long-paced stride that got my lungs working properly and readied my legs. My arms, fists clenched, moved with a fluid rhythm, sending first one then the other shoulder forward. I breathed deeply, padding over the sand. I came to the braided reaches of the river where it swung out over the sands, and adjusted my steps so that I cleared all the channels easily and cleanly, a leap at a time. Once over, I put my head down and increased speed. My head and fists rammed the air, my feet flexed, flung, gripped and pushed.

The air whipped at me, little gusts of drizzle stinging slightly as I hit them. My lungs exploded, imploded, exploded, imploded; plumes of wet sand flew from my soles, rising as I sped on, falling in little curves and spattering back as I raced on into the distance. I brought my face up and put my head back, baring my neck to the wind like a lover, to the rain like an offering. My breath rasped in my throat, and a slight light-headedness I had started to feel owing to hyperoxygenating earlier waned as my muscles took up the slack of the extra power in my blood. I boosted, increasing speed as the jagged line of dead seaweed and old wood and cans and bottles skittered by me; I felt like a bead on a thread being pulled through the air on a line, sucked along by throat and lungs and legs, a continual pounce of flowing energy. I kept the boost up as long as I could; then, when I felt it start to go, relaxed, and went back to merely running fast for a while.

I charged across the sands, the dunes to my left moving by like stands on a racetrack. Ahead I could see the Bomb Circle, where I would stop or turn. I boosted again, head down and shouting to myself inside, screaming mentally, my voice like a press, screwing down tighter to squeeze a final effort from my legs. I flew across the sands, body tilted crazily forward, lungs bursting, legs pounding.

The moment passed and I slowed quickly, dropping to a trot as I approached the Bomb Circle, almost staggering into it, then flinging myself on to the sand inside to lie panting, heaving, gasping, staring at the grey sky and invisible drizzle, spreadeagled in the centre of the rocks. My chest rose and fell, my heart pounded inside its cage. A dull roaring filled my ears, and my whole body tingled and buzzed. My leg muscles seemed to be in some daze of quivering tension. I let my head fall to one side, my cheek against the cool damp sand.

I wondered what it felt like to die.

The Bomb Circle, my dad's leg and his stick, his reluctance to get me a motorbike perhaps, the candles in the skull, the legions of dead mice and hamsters — they're all the fault of Agnes, my father's second wife and my mother.

I can't remember my mother, because if I did I'd hate her. As it is, I hate her name, the idea of her. It was she who let the Stoves take Eric away to Belfast, away from the island, away from what he knew. They thought that my father was a bad parent because he dressed Eric in girl's clothes and let him run wild, and my mother let them take him because she didn't like children in general and Eric in particular; she thought he was bad for her karma in some way. Probably the same dislike of children led her to desert me immediately after my birth, and also caused her only to return on that one, fateful occasion when she was at least partly responsible for my little accident. All in all, I think I have good reason to hate her. I lay there in the Bomb Circle where I killed her other son, and I hoped that she was dead, too.

I went back at a slow run, glowing with energy and feeling even better than I had at the start of the Run. I was already looking forward to going out in the evening — a few drinks and a chat to Jamie, my friend, and some sweaty, ear-ringing music at the Arms. I did one short sprint, just to shake my head as I ran and get some of the sand out of my hair, then relaxed to a trot once more.

The rocks of the Bomb Circle usually get me thinking and this time was no exception, especially considering the way I'd lain down inside them like some Christ or something, opened to the sky, dreaming of death. Well, Paul went about as quickly as you can go; I was certainly humane that time. Blyth had lots of time to realise what was happening, jumping about the Snake Park screaming as the frantic and enraged snake bit his stump repeatedly, and little Esmerelda must have had some inkling what was going to happen to her as she was slowly blown away.

My brother Paul was five when I killed him. I was eight. It was over two years after I had subtracted Blyth with an adder that I found an opportunity to get rid of Paul. Not that I bore him any personal ill-will; it was simply that I knew he couldn't stay. I knew I'd never be free of the dog until he was gone (Eric, poor well-meaning bright but ignorant Eric, thought I still wasn't, and I just couldn't tell him why I knew I was).

Paul and I had gone for a walk along the sand, northwards on a calm, bright autumn day after a ferocious storm the night before that had ripped slates off the roof of the house, torn up one of the trees by the old sheep-pen and even snapped one of the cables on the suspension foot-bridge. Father got Eric to help him with the clearing-up and repairs while I took myself and Paul out from under their feet.

I always got on well with Paul. Perhaps because I knew from an early age that he was not long for this world, I tried to make his time in it as pleasant as possible, and thus ended up treating him far better than most young boys treat their younger brothers.

We saw that the storm had changed a lot of things as soon as we came to the river that marks the end of the island; it had swollen hugely, carving immense channels out of the sand, great surging brown trenches of water streaming by and tearing lumps from the banks continually and sweeping them away. We had to walk right down almost to the sea at its low-tide limit before we could get across. We went on, me holding Paul by the hand, no malice in my heart. Paul was singing to himself and asking questions of the type children tend to, such as why weren't the birds all blown away during the storm, and why didn't the sea fill up with water with the stream going so hard?

As we walked along the sand in the quietness, stopping to look at all the interesting things which had been washed up, the beach gradually disappeared. Where the sand had stretched in an unbroken line of gold towards the horizon, now we saw more and more rock exposed the farther up the strand we looked, until in the distance the dunes faced a shore of pure stone. The storm had swept all the sand away during the night, starting just past the river and continuing farther than the places I had names for or had ever seen. It was an impressive sight, and one that frightened me a little at first, just because it was such a huge change and I was worried that it might happen to the island sometime. I remembered, however, that my father had told me of this sort of thing happening in the past, and the sands had always returned over the following few weeks and months.

Paul had great fun running and jumping from rock to rock and throwing stones into pools between the rocks. Rock pools were something of a novelty for him. We went farther up the wasted beach, still finding interesting pieces of flotsam and finally coming to the rusted remnant I thought was a water-tank or a half-buried canoe, from a distance. It stuck out of a patch of sand, jutting at a steep angle, about a metre and a half of it exposed. Paul was trying to catch fish in a pool as I looked at the thing.

I touched the side of the tapered cylinder wonderingly, feeling something very calm and strong about it, though I didn't know why. Then I stepped back and looked again at it. Its shape became clear, and I could then guess roughly how much of it must still be buried under the sand. It was a bomb, stood on its tail.

I went back to it carefully, stroking it gently and making shushing noises with my mouth. It was rust-red and black with its rotund decay, smelling dank and casting a shellshadow. I followed the line of the shadow along the sand, over the rocks, and found myself looking at little Paul, splashing happily about in a pool, slapping the water with a great flat bit of wood almost as big as he was. I smiled, called him over.

"See this?" I said. It was a rhetorical question. Paul nodded, big eyes staring. "This', I told him, "is a bell. Like the ones in the church in the town. The noise we hear on a Sunday, you know?"

"Yes. Just after brekast, Frank?"

"What?"

"The noise jus affer Sunday brekast, Frank." Paul hit me lightly on the knee with a podgy hand.

I nodded. "Yes, that's right. Bells make that noise. They're great big hollow bits of metal filled up with noises and they let the noises out on Sunday mornings after breakfast. That's what this is."

"A brekast?" Paul looked up at me with mightily furrowed little brows. I shook my head patiently.

"No. A bell."

"'B is for Bell, " Paul said quietly, nodding to himself and staring at the rusting device. Probably remembering an old nursery-book. He was a bright child; my father intended to send him off to school properly when the time came, and had already started him learning the alphabet.

"That's right. Well, this old bell must have fallen off a ship, or perhaps it got washed out here in a flood. I know what we'll do; I'll go up on the dunes and you hit the bell with your bit of wood and we'll see if I can hear it. Will we do that? Would you like that? It'll be very loud and you might get frightened." I stooped down to put my face level with his. He shook his head violently and stuck his nose against mine. "No! Won't get frigh" end!" he shouted. "I'll —»

He was about to skip past me and hit the bomb with the piece of wood — he had already raised it above his head and made the lunge — when I reached out and caught him round the waist.

"Not yet," I said. "Wait until I'm farther away. It's an old bell and it might only have one good noise left in it. You don't want to waste it, do you?"

Paul wriggled, and the look on his face seemed to indicate that he wouldn't actually mind wasting anything, just so long as he got to hit the bell with his plank of wood. "Aw-right," he said, and stopped struggling. I put him down. "But can I hit it really really hard?"

"As hard as you possibly can, when I wave from the top of the dune over there. All right?"

"Can I prakiss?"

"Practise by hitting the sand."

"Can I hit the puddles?"

"Yes, practise hitting the pools of water. That's a good idea."

"Can I hit this puddle?" He pointed with the wood at the circular sand-pool around the bomb. I shook my head.

"No, that might make the bell angry."

He frowned. "Do bells get an'ry?"

"Yes, they do. I'm going now. You hit the bell really hard and I'll listen really hard, right?"

"Yes, Frank."

"You won't hit the bell until I wave, will you?"

He shook his head. "Pomiss."

"Good. Won't be long." I turned and started to head for the dunes at a slow run. My back felt funny. I looked round as I went, checking there was nobody about. There were only a few gulls, though, wheeling in a sky shot with ragged clouds.

Over my shoulder when I looked back, I saw Paul. He was still by the bomb, whacking the sand with his plank, using both hands to hold it and bringing it down with all his strength, jumping up in the air at the same time and yelling. I ran faster, over the rocks on to the firm sand, over the driftline and on up to the golden sand, slower and dry, then up to the grass on the nearest dune. I scrambled to the top and looked out over the sand and rocks to where Paul stood, a tiny figure against the reflected brightness of the pools and wet sands, overshadowed by the tilted cone of metal beside him. I stood up, waited until he noticed me, took one last look round, then waved my hands high over my head and threw myself flat.

While I was lying there, waiting, I realised that I hadn't told Paul where to hit the bomb. Nothing happened. I lay there feeling my stomach sinking slowly into the sand on the top of the dune. I sighed to myself and looked up.

Paul was a distant puppet, jerking and leaping and throwing back his arms and whacking the bomb repeatedly on the side. I could just hear his lusty yells over the whisper of the grass in the wind. "Shit," I said to myself, and put my hand under my chin just as Paul, after a quick glance in my direction, started to attack the nose of the bomb. He had hit it once and I had taken my hand out from under my chin preparatory to ducking when Paul, the bomb and its little halo-pool and everything else for about ten metres around suddenly vanished inside a climbing column of sand and steam and flying rock, lit just the once from inside, in that blindingly brief first moment, by the high explosive detonating.

The rising tower of debris blossomed and drifted, starting to fall as the shockwave pulsed at me from the dune. I was vaguely aware of a lot of small sandslips along the drying faces of the nearby dunes. The noise rolled over then, a twisting crack and belly-rumble of thunder. I watched a gradually widening circle of splashes go out from the centre of the explosion as the debris came back to earth. The pillar of gas and sand was pulled out by the wind, darkening the sand under its shadow and forming a curtain of haze under its base like you see under a heavy cloud sometimes as it starts to get rid of its rain. I could see the crater now.

I ran down. I stood about fifty metres away from the still steaming crater. I didn't look too closely at any of the bits and pieces lying around, squinting at them from the side of my eye, wanting and not wanting to see bloody meat or tattered clothing. The noise rumbled back uncertainly from the hills beyond the town. The edge of the crater was marked with huge splinters of stone torn up from the bedrock under the sands; they stood like broken teeth around the scene, pointing at the sky or fallen slanted over. I watched the distant cloud from the explosion drift away over the firth, dispersing, then I turned and ran as fast as I could for the house.

So nowadays I can say it was a German bomb of five hundred kilograms and it was dropped by a crippled He. III trying to get back to its Norwegian base after an unsuccessful attack on the flying-boat base farther down the firth. I like to think it was the gun in my bunker that hit it and forced the pilot to turn tail and dump his bombs.

The tips of some of those great splinters of igneous rock still stick above the surface of the long-returned sand, and they form the Bomb Circle, poor dead Paul's most fitting monument: a blasphemous stone circle where the shadows play.

I was lucky, again. Nobody saw anything, and nobody could believe that I had done it. I was distracted with grief this time, torn by guilt, and Eric had to look after me while I acted my part to perfection, though I say it myself. I didn't enjoy deceiving Eric, but I knew it was necessary; I couldn't tell him I'd done it because he wouldn't have understood why I'd done it. He would have been horrified, and very likely never have been my friend again. So I had to act the tortured, self-blaming child, and Eric had to comfort me while my father brooded.

Actually, I didn't like the way Diggs questioned me about what had happened, and for a few moments I thought he might have guessed, but my replies seemed to satisfy him. It didn't help that I had to call my father «uncle» and Eric and Paul "cousins'; this was my father's idea of trying to fool the policeman about my parentage in case Diggs did any asking around and discovered that I didn't exist officially. My story was that I was the orphaned son of my father's long-lost younger brother, and only staying on occasional extended holidays on the island while I was passed from relative to relative and my future was decided.

Anyway, I got through this tricky interval, and even the sea co-operated for once, coming in just after the explosion and sweeping away any tell-tale tracks I might have left an hour or more before Diggs arrived from the village to inspect the scene.

Mrs Clamp was at the house when I got back, unloading the huge wicker hopper on the front of her ancient bike which lay propped against the kitchen table. She was busy stuffing our cupboards, the fridge and the freezer with the food and supplies she had brought from the town.

"Good morning, Mrs Clamp," I said pleasantly as I entered the kitchen. She turned to look at me. Mrs Clamp is very old and extremely small. She looked me up and down and said, "Oh, it's you, is it?" and turned back to the wicker hopper on the bike, delving into its depths with both hands, surfacing with long packages wrapped in newspaper. She staggered over to the freezer, climbed on to a small stool by its side, unwrapped the packages to reveal frozen packs of my beefburgers, and placed them in the freezer, leaning over it until she was almost inside. It struck me how easy it would be to- I shook my head clear of the silly thought. I sat down at the kitchen table to watch Mrs Clamp work.

"How are you keeping these days, Mrs Clamp?" I asked.

"Oh, I'm well enough," Mrs Clamp said, shaking her head and coming down off the stool, picking up some more frozen burgers and going back to the freezer. I wondered if she might ever get frostbite; I was sure I could see little crystals of ice glinting on her faint moustache.

"My, that's a big load you've brought for us today. I'm surprised you didn't fall over on the way here."

"You won't catch me falling over, no." Mrs Clamp shook her head once more, went to the sink, reached up and over while on her tip-toes, turned on the hot water, rinsed her hands, wiped them on her blue-check, bri-nylon work-coat and took some cheese from the bike.

"Can I make you a cup of something, Mrs Clamp?"

"Not for me," Mrs Clamp said, shaking her head inside the fridge, slightly below the height of the ice-making compartment.

"Oh, well, I won't, then." I watched her wash her hands one more time. While she started sorting out the lettuce from the spinach I took my leave and went up to my room.

We ate our usual Saturday lunch: fish, with potatoes from the garden. Mrs Clamp was at the other end of the table from my father instead of me, as is traditional. I sat halfway down the table with my back to the sink, arranging fish bones in meaningful patterns on the plate while Father and Mrs Clamp exchanged very formal, almost ritualised pleasantries. I made a tiny human skeleton with the bones of the dead fish and distributed a little ketchup about it to make it more realistic.

"More tea, Mr Cauldhame?" Mrs Clamp said.

"No, thank you, Mrs Clamp," my father replied.

"Francis?" Mrs Clamp asked me.

"No, thank you," I said. A pea would do for a rather green skull for the skeleton. I placed it there. Father and Mrs Clamp droned on about this and that.

"I hear the constable was down the other day, if you don't mind me saying so," Mrs Clamp said, and coughed politely.

"Indeed," my father said, and shovelled so much food into his mouth he wouldn't be able to speak for another minute or so. Mrs Clamp nodded at her much-salted fish and sipped her tea. I hummed, and my father glared at me over jaws like heaving wrestlers.

Nothing more was said on the subject.

Saturday night at the Cauldhame Arms and there I stood as usual at the back of the packed, smoke-filled room at the rear of the hotel, a plastic pint glass in my hand full of lager, my legs braced slightly on the floor in front of me, my back against a wallpapered pillar, and Jamie the dwarf sitting on my shoulders, resting his pint of Heavy on my head now and again and engaging me in conversation.

"What you been doin', then, Frankie?"

"Not a lot. I killed a few rabbits the other day and I keep getting weird phone calls from Eric, but that's about all. What about you?"

"Nothin" much. How come Eric's calling you?"

"Didn't you know?" I said, looking up at him. He leaned over and looked down at me. Faces look funny upside down. "Oh, he's escaped."

"Escaped?"

"Sh. If people don't know, there's no need to tell them. Yeah, he got out. He's called the house a couple of times and he says he's coming this way. Diggs came and told us the day he broke out."

"Christ. Are they looking for him?"

"So Angus says. Hasn't there been anything on the news? I thought you might have heard something."

"Nup. Jeez. Do you think they'll tell people in the town if they don't catch him?"

"Don't know." I would have shrugged.

"What if he's still into setting dogs on fire? Shit. And those worms he used to try to get kids to eat. The locals'll go crazy." I could feel him shaking his head.

"I think they're keeping it quiet. Probably they think they can catch him."

"Do you think they'll catch him?"

"Ho. I couldn't say. He might be crazy, but he's clever. He wouldn't have got out in the first place if he hadn't been, and when he calls up he sounds sharp. Sharp but bonkers."

"You don't seem all that worried."

"I hope he makes it. I'd like to see him again. And I'd like to see him get all the way back here because… just because." I took a drink.

"Shit. I hope he doesn't cause any aggro."

"He might. That's all I'm worried about. He sounds like he might still not like dogs an awful lot. I think the kids are safe, though, all the same."

"How's he travelling? Has he told you how he's intendin" to get here? Has he any money?"

"He must have some to be making the phone calls, but he's stealing things mostly."

"God. Well, at least you can't lose remission for escaping from a loony bin."

"Ay," I said. The band came on then, a group of four punks from Inverness called the Vomits. The lead singer had a Mohican haircut and lots of chains and zips. He grabbed the microphone while the other three started thrashing their respective instruments and screamed:

"Ma gurl-fren's leff me an ah feel like a bum,

Ah loss ma job an when ah wank ah can't cum…."

I nestled my shoulders against the pillar a little more firmly and sipped from my glass as Jamie's feet beat against my chest and the howling, crashing music thundered through the sweaty room. This sounded like it would be fun.

During the interval, while one of the barmen was taking a mop and bucket to the front of the stage where everybody had been spitting, I went up to the bar to get some more drinks.

"The usual?" said Duncan behind the bar, Jamie nodded. "And how's Frank?" Duncan asked, pulling a lager and a Heavy.

"OK. And yourself?" I said.

"Getting along, getting along, You still wanting bottles?"

"No, thanks. I've got enough for my home-brew now."

"We'll still see you in here, though, will we?"

"Oh, yes," I said. Duncan reached up to hand Jamie his pint and I took mine, putting the money down at the same time.

"Cheers, lads," Duncan said as we turned and went back to the pillar.

A few pints later, when the Vomits were doing their first encore, Jamie and I were up dancing, jumping up and down, J amie shouting and clapping his hands and dancing about on my shoulders. I don't mind dancing with girls when it's for Jamie, though one time with one tall lassie he wanted us both to go outside so he could kiss her. The thought of her tits pressed up against my face nearly made me throw up, and I had to disappoint him. Anyway, most of the punk girls don't smell of perfume and only a few wear skirts and even then they're usually leather ones. Jamie and I got pushed about a bit and nearly fell down a couple of times, but we survived through to the end of the night without any scrapes. Unfortunately, Jamie ended up talking to some woman, but I was too busy trying to breathe deeply and keep the far wall steady really to care.

"Yeah, I'm going to get a bike soon. Two-fifty, of course," Jamie was saying. I was half-listening. He was not going to get a bike because he wouldn't be able to reach the pedals, but I wouldn't have said anything even if I could have, because nobody expects people to tell the truth to women and, besides, that's what friends are for, as they say. The girl, when I could see her properly, was a rough-looking twenty, and had as many coats of paint over her eyes as a Roller gets on its doors. She smoked a horrible French cigarette.

"Ma mate's got a bike — Sue. It's a Suzuki 185GT her brother used tae have, but she's saving up fur a Gold Wing."

They were putting the chairs up on the tables and wiping up the mess and the cracked glasses and limp crisp-bags, and I still wasn't feeling too good. The girl sounded worse the more I listened to her. Her accent sounded horrible: west coast somewhere; Glasgow, I shouldn't wonder.

"Naw, I wouldn't have one of those. Too heavy. A five hundred would do me. I really fancy a Moto Guzzi, but I'm not sure about shaft drive…., Christ, I was about to do the Technicolor Yawn all over this girl's jacket, through the tears and rusting her zips and filling her pockets, and probably send Jamie flying across the room into the beer-crates under the speaker stacks with the first awful heave, and here were these two trading absurd biker fantasies.

"Want a fag?" the girl said, shoving a packet up past my nose towards Jamie. I was seeing trails and lights from the blue packet's passing even after she brought it back down. Jamie must have taken a cigarette even though I knew he didn't smoke, because I saw the lighter go up, igniting in front of my eyes in a shower of sparks like a fireworks display. I could almost feel my occipital lobe fusing. I thought of making some smart remark to Jamie about stunting his growth, but all lines to and from my brain seemed to be jammed with urgent messages coming from my guts. I could feel an awful churning going on down there, and I was sure it would only end one way, but I couldn't move. I was stuck there like a flying buttress between the floor and the pillar, and Jamie was still gibbering away to the girl about the sound a Triumph makes and the high-speed runs she'd done up the side of Loch Lomond at night.

"You on holiday, like?"

"Aye, me an" ma mates. Ah've got a boyfriend but he's oot on the rigs."

"Aw aye."

I was still breathing hard, trying to clear my head with oxygen. I didn't understand Jamie; he was half the size I was, half the weight or less, and no matter how much we drank together he never seemed to be affected. He certainly wasn't dumping his pints on the floor on the sly; I'd have got wet if he was. I realised that the girl had finally noticed me. She poked my shoulder for what I gradually comprehended wasn't the first time.

"Hey," she said.

"What?" I struggled.

"You all right?"

"Aye," I nodded slowly, hoping to content her with this, then looked away and up to one side as though I had just found something very interesting and important to look at on the ceiling. Jamie nudged fie with his feet. "What?" I said again, not trying to look at him.

"You staying here all night?"

"What?" I said. "No. How, are you ready? Right." I put my hands behind me to find the pillar, found it and pushed myself up, hoping my feet wouldn't slip on the beer-wet floor.

"Maybe you'd better let me down, Frank lad," Jamie said, nudging me hard. I looked sort of up and to the side again, as though at him, then nodded. I let my back slide down the pillar until I was virtually squatting on the floor. The girl helped Jamie jump down. His red hair and her blonde looked suddenly garish from that angle in the now brightly lit room. Duncan was coming closer with the brush and a big bucket, emptying ashtrays and mopping things. I struggled to get up, then felt Jamie and the girl take me one under each arm and help me. I was starting to get triple vision and wondering how you did that with only two eyes. I wasn't sure if they were talking to me or not.

I said, "Aye," just in case they were, then felt myself being led out into the fresh air through the fire exit. I needed to go to the toilet, and with every step I took there seemed to be more convulsions from my guts. I had this horrible vision of my body being made up almost completely of two equal-sized compartments, one holding piss and the other undigested beer, whisky, crisps, dry-roasted peanuts, spit, snot, bile and one or two bits of fish and potatoes. Some sick part of my mind suddenly thought of fried eggs lying thick with grease on a plate, surrounded with bacon, curled and scooped and holding little pools of fat, the outsides of the plate dotted with coagulated lumps of grease. I fought down the ghastly urge coming up from my stomach. I tried to think of nice things; then, when I couldn't think of any, I determined to concentrate on what was happening around me. We were outside the Arms, walking along the pavement past the Bank, Jamie on one side of me and the girl on the other. It was a cloudy night and cool, and the streetlights were sodium. We left the smell of the pub behind, and I tried to get some of the fresh air through my head. I was aware I was staggering slightly, lurching sporadically into Jamie or the girl, but there wasn't a great deal I could do about it; I felt rather like one of those ancient dinosaurs so huge that they had a virtually separate brain to control their back legs. I seemed to have a separate brain for each limb, but they'd all broken off diplomatic relations. I swayed and stumbled along as best I could, trusting to luck and the two people with me. Frankly, I didn't have much faith in either, Jamie being too small to stop me if I really started to topple, and the girl being a girl. Probably too weak; and, even if she wasn't, I expected she would just let me crack my skull on the pavement because women like to see men helpless.

"You tae alwiz like rat?" the girl said.

"Like what?" Jamie said, without, I thought, the correct amount of pre-emptive indignation.

"You up on his showders."

"Oh, no, that's just so I can see the band better."

"Thank Christ fur "at. Ah thought maybe ye went tae ra bog like rat."

"Oh, aye; we go into a cubicle and Frank goes in the bowl while I do it into the cistern."

"Yur kiddin'!"

"Aye," Jamie said in a voice distorted by a grin. I was walking along as best I could, listening to all this garbage. I was slightly annoyed at Jamie saying anything, even jokingly, about me going to the toilet; he knows how sensitive I am about it. Only once or twice has he taunted me with what sounds like the interesting sport of going into the gents in the Cauldhame Arms (or anywhere else, I suppose) and attacking the drowned fag-ends in the urinals with a stream of piss.

I admit I have watched Jamie doing this and been quite impressed. The Cauldhame Arms has excellent facilities for the sport, having a great long gutter-like urinal extending right along one wall and halfway down another, with only one drainhole. According to Jamie, the object of the game is to get a soggy fag-end from wherever it is in the channel along to and down the coverless hole, breaking it up as much as possible en route. You can score points for the number of ceramic divisions you can move the butt over (with extra for actually getting it down the hole and extra for doing it from the far end of the gutter from the hole), for the amount of destruction caused — apparently it's very hard to get the little black cone at the bummed end to disintegrate — and, over the course of the evening, the number of fag-ends so dispatched.

The game can be played in a more limited form in the little bowl-type individual urinals which are more fashionable these days, but Jamie has never tried this himself, being so short that if he is to use one of those he has to stand about a metre back from it and lob his waste water in.

Anyway, it sounds like something to make long pisses much more interesting, but it is not for me, thanks to cruel fate.

"Is he yur bruthur or sumhin?"

"Naw, he's ma friend."

"Zay olwiz get like iss?"

"Ay, usually, on a Saturday night."

This is a monstrous lie, of course. I am rarely so drunk that I can't talk or walk straight. I'd have told Jamie as much, too, if I'd been able to talk and hadn't been concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. I wasn't so sure I was going to throw up now, but that same irresponsible, destructive part of my brain — just a few neurons probably, but I suppose there are a few in every brain and it only takes a very small hooligan element to give the rest a bad name — kept thinking about those fried eggs and bacon on the cold plate, and each time I almost heaved. It took an act of will to think of cool winds on hilltops or the pattern of water-shadows over wave-carved sand — things which I have always thought epitomise clarity and freshness and helped to divert my brain from dwelling on the contents of my stomach.

However, I did need to have a piss even more desparately than before. Jamie and the girl were inches away from me, holding me by an arm each, being bumped into frequently, but my drunkenness had now got to such a state — as the last two quickly consumed pints and an accompanying whisky caught up with my racing bloodstream — that I might as well have been on another planet for all the hope I had of making them understand what I wanted. They walked on either side of me alld talked to each other, jabbering utter nonsense as though it was all so important, and I, with more brains than the two of them put together and information of the most vital nature, couldn't get a word out.

There had to be a way. I tried to shake my head clear and take some more deep breaths. I steadied my pace. I thought very carefully about words and how you made them. I checked my tongue and tested my throat. I had to pull myself together. I had to communicate. I looked round as we crossed a road; I saw the sign for Union Street where it was fixed to a low wall. I turned to Jamie and then the girl, cleared my throat and said quite clearly: "I didn't know if you two ever shared or, indeed, still do share, for that matter, for all that I know, at least mutually between yourselves but at any rate not including me — the misconception I once perchanced to place upon the words contained upon yonder sign, but it is a fact that I thought the 'union' referred to in said nomenclature delineated an association of working people, and it did seem to me at the time to be quite a socialist thing for the town fathers to call a street; it struck me that all was not yet lost as regards the prospects for a possible peace or at the very least a cease-fire in the class war if such acknowledgements of the worth of trade unions could find their way on to such a venerable and important thoroughfare's sign, but I must admit I was disabused of this sadly over-optimistic notion when my father — God rest his sense of humour — informed me that it was the then recently confirmed union of the English and Scottish parliaments the local worthies — in common with hundreds of other town councils throughout what had until that point been an independent realm — were celebrating with such solemnity and permanence, doubtless with a view to the opportunities for profit which this early form of takeover bid offered."

The girl looked at Jamie. "Dud he say sumhin er?"

"I thought he was just clearing his throat," said Jamie.

"Ah thought he said sumhin aboot bananas."

"Bananas?" Jamie said incredulously, looking at the girl.

"Naw," she said, looking at me and shaking her head. "Right enough."

So much for communication, I thought. Obviously both so drunk they didn't even understand correctly spoken English. I sighed heavily as I looked first at one and then at the other while we made our slow way down the main street, past Woolworth and the traffic lights. I looked ahead and tried to think what on earth I was going to do. They helped me over the next road, me nearly tripping as I crossed the far kerb. Suddenly I was very aware of the vulnerability of my nose and front teeth, should they happen to come into contact with the granite of Porteniel's pavements at any velocity above quite a small fraction of a metre per second.

"Aye, me and one of my mates have been going round the Forestry Commission tracks up in the hills, goin" round at fifty, skiddin" all over the place like a speedway."

"Za'afac'?"

My God, they were still talking about bikes.

"Where-ur we takin" hum own-yway?"

"Ma mum's. If she's still up, she'll make us some tea."

"Yer maw's?"

"Aye."

"Aw."

It came to me in a flash. It was so obvious I couldn't imagine why I hadn't seen it before. I knew there was no time to lose and no point in hesitating- I was going to explode soon — so I put my head down and broke free from Jamie and the girl, running off down the street. I'd escape; do an Eric so I could find somewhere nice and quiet for a piss.

"Frank!"

"Aw, fur fuck's sek, gie's a brek, whit's ay up tae noo?"

The pavement was still below my feet, which were moving more or less as they were supposed to. I could hear Jamie and the girl running after me shouting, but I was already past the old chip shop and the war memorial and picking up speed. My distended bladder wasn't helping matters, but it wasn't holding me back as much as I'd feared, either.

"Frank! Come back! Frank, stop! What's wrong? Frank, ya crazy bastard, you'll break your neck!"

"Aw, le'm gaw, zafiez hied."

"No! He's my friend! Frank!"

I turned the corner into Bank Street, pounded down it just missing two lamp-posts, took a sharp left into Adam Smith Street and came to McGarvie's garage. I skidded into the forecourt and ran behind a pump, gasping and belching and feeling my head pound. I dropped my cords and squatted down, leaning back against the five-star pump and breathing heavily as the pool of steaming piss collected on the bark-rough concrete of the fuel apron.

Footsteps clattered and a shadow came from the right of me. I looked round to see Jamie.

"Haw- ha — ha — " he gasped, putting one hand on another pump to steady himself as he bent over a little and looked at his feet, the other hand on a knee, his chest heaving. "Here — ha here- ha — here you — ha — are. Fffwwaaw…." He sat down on the plinth supporting the pumps and stared at the dark glass of the office for a while. I sat, too, slumped against the pump, letting the last drops fall free. I stumbled back and sat down heavily on the plinth, then staggered upright and pulled my cords back up.

"What did you do that for?" Jamie said, still panting.

I waved at him, struggling to do my belt up. I was starting to feel sick again, getting magnified wafts of pub smoke off my clothes.

"Saw-" I started to say "Sorry', then the word turned into a heave. That anti-social part of my brain suddenly thought about the greasy eggs and bacon again and my stomach geysered. I doubled up, retching and heaving, feeling my guts contract like a balling fist inside me; involuntary, alive, like a woman must feel with a kicking child. My throat was rasped with the force of the jet. Jamie caught me as I almost fell over. I stood there like a half-opened penknife, splattering the forecourt noisily. Jamie shoved one hand down the back of my cords to keep me from falling on my face, and put the other hand on to my forehead, murmuring something. I went on being sick, my stomach starting to hurt badly now; my eyes were full of tears, my nose was running and my whole head felt like a ripe tomato, ready to burst. I fought for breath between heaves, snatching down flecks of vomit and coughing and spewing at the same time. I listened to myself make a horrible noise like Eric going crazy over the phone, and hoped that nobody was passing and could see me in such an undignified and weak position. I stopped, felt better, then started again and felt ten times worse. I moved to one side with Jamie helping me and went down on my hands and knees on a comparatively clean part of the concrete where the oil stains looked old. I coughed and spluttered and gagged a few times, then fell back into Jamie's arms, bringing my legs up to my chin to ease the ache in my stomach muscles.

"Better now?" Jamie said. I nodded. I tipped forward so that I rested on both buttocks and heels, my head between my knees. Jamie patted me. "Just a minute, Frankie lad." I felt him go off for a few seconds. He came back with some coarse paper towels from the forecourt dispenser and wiped my mouth with one bit and the rest of my face with another bit. He even took them and put them in the litter-bin.

Though I still felt drunk, my stomach ached and my throat felt like a couple of hedgehogs had had a fight in it, I did feel a lot better. "Thanks," I managed, and started trying to stand. Jamie helped me to my feet.

"By God, what a state to get yourself in, Frank."

"Aye," I said, wiping my eyes with my sleeve and looking round to see that we were still alone. I clapped Jamie on the shoulder a couple of times and we made for the street.

We walked up the deserted street with me breathing deeply and Jamie holding me by one elbow. The girl had gone, obviously enough, but I wasn't sorry.

"Why'd you run off like that?"

I shook my head. "Needed to go."

"What?" Jamie laughed. "Why didn't you just say?"

"Couldn't."

"Just "cause there was a girl there?"

"No," I said, and coughed. "Couldn't speak. Too drunk."

"What?" laughed Jamie.

I nodded. "Yeah," I said. He laughed again and shook his head. We kept on walking Jamie's mother was still up and she made us some tea. She's a big woman who's always in a green housecoat when I see her in the evenings after the pub when, as often happens, her son and I end up at her house. She's not too unpleasant, even if she does pretend to like me more than I know she really does.

"Och, laddie, you're not looking your best. Here, sit down and I'll get some tea on the go. Ach, you wee lamb." I was planted in a chair in the living-room of the council house while Jamie hung up our jackets. I could hear him jumping in the hall.

"Thank you," I croaked, throat dry.

"There you are, pet. Now, do you want me to turn on the fire for you? Are you too cold?"

I shook my head, and she smiled and nodded and patted me on the shoulder and padded off to the kitchen. Jamie came in and sat on the couch next to my chair. He looked at me and grinned and shook his head.

"What a state. What a state!" He clapped his hands and rocked forward on the couch, his feet sticking out straight in front of him. I rolled my eyes and looked away. "Never mind, Frankie lad. A couple of cups of tea and you'll be fine."

"Huh," I managed, and shivered.

I left about one o'clock in the morning, more sober, and awash with tea. My stomach and throat were almost back to normal, though my voice still sounded harsh. I bade Jamie and his mother goodnight and walked on through the outskirts of town to the track heading for the island, then down the track in blackness, sometimes using my small torch, towards the bridge and the house.

It was a quiet walk through the marsh and dune land and the patchy pasture. Apart from the few noises I made on the path, all I could hear was the very occasional and distant roar of heavy trucks on the road through town. The clouds covered most of the sky and there was little light from the moon, and none ahead of me at all.

I remembered once, in the middle of summer two years ago, when I was coming down the path in the late dusk after a day's walking in the hills beyond the town, I saw in the gathering night strange lights, shifting in the air over and far beyond the island. They wavered and moved uncannily, glinting and shifting and burning in a heavy, solid way no thing should in the air. I stood and watched them for a while, training my binoculars on them and seeming, now and again in the shifting images of light, to discern structures around them. A chill passed through me then and my mind raced to reason out what I was seeing. I glanced quickly about in the gloom, and then back to those distant, utterly silent towers of flickering flame. They hung there in the sky like faces of fire looking down on the island, like something waiting.

Then it came to me, and I knew.

A mirage, a reflection of layers on air out to sea. I was watching the gas-flares of oil-rigs maybe hundreds of kilometres away, out in the North Sea. Looking again at those dim shapes around the flame, they did appear to be rigs, vaguely made out in their own gassy glare. I went on my way happy after that — indeed, happier than I had been before I had seen the strange apparitions — and it occurred to me that somebody both less logical and less imaginative would have jumped to the conclusion that what they had seen were UFOs.

I got to the island eventually. The house was dark. I stood looking at it in the darkness, just aware of its bulk in the feeble light of a broken moon, and I thought it looked even bigger than it really was, like a stone-giant's head, a huge moonlit skull full of shapes and memories, staring out to sea and attached to a vast, powerful body buried in the rock and sand beneath, ready to shrug itself free and disinter itself on some unknowable command or cue.

The house stared out to sea, out to the night, and I went into it.