First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (23 page)

“I’d like to go into Stroven,” I said.

“You can’t do that,” he said. “It’s a prohibited area.”

“Why?”

“All the land around the town’s in danger of subsiding. There’s a big sink-hole. The engineers won’t let anybody past here.”

“I’ve come a long way,” I said. “I used to live here.”

He saw I was disappointed.

“Really?” he said. “Look, maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, but I don’t see any harm in it.” He pointed down the disused road. “About half a mile away you’ll come to an electrified fence. It runs all round the Stroven area. You can walk along the outside, if you want. That’s all the engineers do when they’re inspecting the place. If you follow the fence, it goes up the Cairn Head and you can look down and see the whole town. Wait a minute.” He went into the hut and came back with a pair of binoculars. “You can borrow these.”

I thanked him and put them round my neck.

I began walking down the road and soon came to the fence he’d mentioned. It was heavy wire mesh, about ten feet high, with coils of razor wire along the top. Little metal signs in red—
DANGER–LIVE
—were attached to it at intervals.

I climbed the low stone wall that bordered the disused road on the eastward side, jumped into the moorland and began walking alongside the fence. I wished I’d brought Wellington boots, for the ground was boggy, and my shoes and socks were soon mucky. But at least my coat was warm,
and it felt good to be here in the clean air, good to be walking here where I’d walked so long ago.

As I moved across the moorland, I saw clusters of sheep on the hillsides, browsing the spring heather. They looked at me, but weren’t afraid. In the grey sky, the peewits wheeled and mewed. The land rose more steeply as the fence climbed along the side of the Cairn Head. I’d climbed it often when I was a boy. The hill hadn’t changed, but I had: I was breathing heavily and sweating with the effort. But I knew I was almost there. Just round the last shoulder of the Cairn was a little shelf where I’d be able to look down on Stroven.

And suddenly, there it was, nestled among the book-ends of hills.

From where I stood, a thousand feet above the town and half a mile away from it, you would have sworn nothing had changed. Except that it was deserted. At the edge of the town, the mine elevator stood dominant as ever under the grey sky. The granite buildings of the main street—the Town Hall, the Bank, the Church—all looked the same. Everything around the Square—Glenn’s Pharmacy, the Stroven Café—looked to me as it always had. The miners’ row houses were as neat as ever. And of course, the house where I was born, where my mother died. It looked intact.

The entire scene might have been early morning before anyone was stirring in the streets and houses of Stroven, before the mine elevator began hoisting the men up from tunnels thousands of feet below.

I looked for a long time.

Then I lifted the binoculars. As I adjusted the focus, reality assaulted my eyes: broken cables dangled from the mine elevator; grass and weeds of every sort had sprouted along the main street: the paving was cracked like a jigsaw puzzle. The middle of the Square was in shadow, but the
buildings round it were as pathetic as any ghost town: paint had peeled away; windows were shattered; doors drooped from their hinges; roofs were riddled with holes where the slates had fallen.

I swung the binoculars over towards the house where I was born. The roof had collapsed on one side, the windows were broken, the chimney stack had crumbled. In the garden, hay and thistles and nettles were almost as high as the wild hedgerow.

Now I swung further west: towards the graveyard.

That was when I noticed something odd. Most of the monuments over the graves were broken. But what was surprising was this: they looked as though they’d been deliberately pushed over so that they pointed in one direction—towards the town itself.

I swung the binoculars back to Stroven and noticed now, for the first time, the same phenomenon there: every single building had a slight tilt, but not an arbitrary one. They were all leaning towards the Square. I examined the Square again. I had thought the middle part—a fifty-yard patch of greenery with the war memorial and some benches—was in shadow. But what I’d thought was a shadow was in fact a huge sink-hole. Everything round it—buildings, telephone poles, street-lights—was tilted towards that great hole in the earth.

And even while I was watching, I saw everything move, ever so slightly, nearer to that hole: just an inch or two, but a definite movement—the way a glacier must move. Then the fronts of some of the buildings which were nearest the edge—the Library, Darvell’s Grocery, MacCallum’s Bakery—began to crumble, then slid into the pit in a great cloud of dust. What remained of them stood precariously on the edge, their insides open to the world, like ruined dollhouses.

Just then, something awful happened. I heard a dull rumble, like thunder, but underground. The ledge I was standing on tilted, just a little, towards Stroven. The Cairn Head itself began to move, ever so slightly, in the direction of the great hole.

What with the rumbling and the movement of the hill and the horror that this might be the start of a general, irretrievable sliding of the earth towards that sink-hole, I panicked. I turned and started running.

And someone ran after me.

That was the most frightening thing of all. I was running, and I could hear the footsteps behind me. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see him, or at least his shape. He seemed to be wearing black clothes and he was determined to catch me and bring me back to the crumbling ledge. The terror of him made me run faster than I’ve ever run. I kept glancing back, hoping, hoping I could stay out of his reach. I was going down the steepest part of the downhill, I was leaping rather than running, when my foot caught in the heather and I tumbled hard down the slope of the Cairn Head and tumbled and tumbled till I came to a stop against a boulder.

I got to my feet, winded, but ready to fight him off and keep running. I couldn’t see any sign of him. I looked back towards the Cairn. Nothing. The only living creatures were a pack of sheep grazing nearby, some of them watching me. I could hear nothing and feel no movement of the earth. I touched my face and my hand came away with blood where the edge of the binoculars had cut me.

I took a few deep breaths and made myself walk deliberately the rest of the way back to the road. At the guardhouse I thanked the young soldier for the binoculars.

“Are you all right?” He was looking at the blood on my face, the mud on my clothing and shoes.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Did anyone else pass this way after me?”

“No,” he said. “The engineers won’t be here till tomorrow.”

“Did you hear any noises? Did the ground shake?”

“No, nothing at all,” he said. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yes,” I said.

As I walked back towards the car, I realized what I’d been through was so like my recurrent nightmares. I tried to tell myself it was impossible that a nightmare could inject itself into my waking life, nor could a creature out of a nightmare have any substance in the real world.

Common sense should have reassured me. But it didn’t.

The rain began again as I drove out of the maze of hill roads and came onto the motorway. My plan for this trip had been vague except for the visit to Stroven. Now that was done and I’d no other reason for being here. No one lived here any more. Perhaps I could have found out where they were and looked them up; but I wasn’t sure I wanted to see any of them or that they’d have wanted to see me.

I drove north, towards Glasgow. The day was getting near dusk, and the rain was heavy. By the time I reached the City, it was night. The sidewalks were crowded with people, some holding umbrellas, most with bare heads, their coat collars turned up against the rain. They seemed to me like zombies, their eyes blank: if they were looking anywhere, it was inside.

An overhead sign pointed in the direction of the river, and I followed the cars headed that way. Most of them crossed the bridge, but I took the road along the north bank, towards the docks.

I drove slowly, for I knew the Hochmagandie was near
here. I thought I might take a room, stay the night. I was curious to see if the little man with the nose-cone still worked there and whether he’d remember me. I’d ask him for the same room I’d slept in when I was a boy. I don’t really know what I was thinking: that I’d be able to peep through the crack in the door and see some bar-woman with a strange sailor?

But there was no sign of the Hochmagandie. The old tenements and warehouses along the river bank had been demolished. The railway lines had been paved over and the giant cranes and bollards had been taken away. The docks had been replaced with flower gardens where nothing bloomed at this season, except for garbage planted there by the chilly winds. Behind everything, the river still glinted in the city lights.

I found a side street and turned back. I drove south over the river towards the airport and arranged for a flight the next morning. I took a room in the airport hotel and tried to sleep.

But I was tormented by a nightmare: I was once again high on the Cairn Head, watching the town, when I heard a sound, a distant whining. I looked towards the graveyard, and as I did, the graves opened and out climbed the women of Stroven, all dressed in black. They took up their positions and began marching, marching to the sound of pipes and drums, with their pennant flying, heading straight for the Square. And as I watched, all of the buildings in Stroven began to lean even more, then they started to crumble and slide towards the great pit. The column of women reached the main street and marched towards the Square. I shouted to them to stop, I tried to warn them, but they paid no attention: they began to slide, along with everything else, sliding and sliding over the edge, their garments fluttering as they disappeared row by row into the bowels
of the earth. Till the last of the women slid to the edge—a tall woman still carrying a pennant with words on it I couldn’t read. At the last moment, she found a rock to rest her feet against, and she looked up in my direction. She held out one hand towards me as though appealing for help. “Mother!” I called out. And I was about to risk everything and go to her, when I noticed her eyes: they were burning like a wild beast’s and I was afraid that if I went to help her she’d pull me down with her. She stared at me. Then, holding her pennant aloft, she turned and leaped into the pit.

I didn’t sleep much after that: my mind was like one of those caged wolves that prowled endlessly back and forth, back and forth at Camberloo Zoo. By seven o’clock, I was on a flight headed home, the drone of the plane’s engine like a lament. From the window, the land below looked sterile and harsh and the shore line appeared to be eroding: as though at any moment the whole island might be overwhelmed by the cold, grey-green ocean.

What an unpleasant place, I said to myself: just the place for a disaster. But I couldn’t convince myself of that: it was no better and no worse than any other place. When you’re unhappy,
every
place is perfect for disaster.

T
HE NEXT FEW MONTHS
at Camberloo were difficult for me. I had accumulated some fresh nightmares: I was in a dark tunnel deep underground, closed off at both ends; the
air was turning foul and I was slowly suffocating. Or, I was locked in a cell in a long corridor of empty cells, in a place like the House of Mercy. I could smell smoke, and hear the roar of flames. I’d call out for help; but there was no one to hear. There was no hope for me. Or, I was walking in what seemed to be a high, dreary warehouse filled with people; but they had the eyes and beaks of vultures and long talons instead of fingers; at any moment they’d realize I was a human being and tear me to pieces. And on and on, night after night, month after month, the bad dreams repeating and interweaving in terrifying combinations.

I tried sleeping pills. They only brought on worse nightmares and made it harder for me to wake from them. I tried drinking scotch, often till two in the morning, to dose myself into unconsciousness and dreamlessness. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not.

Once or twice I was so weary of it all, I even took out those cyanide pills Doctor Giffen had left me. If I didn’t swallow them, I think it was more from the fear they might taste bad, than that they’d kill me.

One evening, I called in at The Prince, a bar near my apartment. The bartender had served me often over the years. He looked at me thoughtfully as he poured my drink.

“You really look as though you need to relax,” he said. “You need to unwind a bit.” He said he knew of a place where more than one person had found an infallible cure for their worries. Maybe I should give it a try. He wrote down an address.

That was how I first became acquainted with an old mansion with ornamental turrets along Regent Street, not far from the County Courthouse. It opened to me an aspect of Camberloo I hadn’t been familiar with. The city was
small, but it was big enough to have its seedy side. The old mansions in the tree-lined streets north of City Hall had been deserted by the wealthy long ago. Some had been converted into late-night bars and clubs.

The turreted mansion offered a unique kind of experience. I started going there at least once a week, and for a while at least, I found an escape from my nightmares. The visits seemed somehow to erase the fearful imagery from my mind.

On a particular Wednesday night in late October, I was in that mansion. I was lying waiting on a bare mattress, my favourite mattress, in the dark corner of a long, brown-curtained room lit by candles. It had once been a dining-room. A dozen mattresses had been placed around on the wooden floor, and three or four of them were occupied too. The sweet smell of the smoke was thick in the air.

The owner came and knelt on the floor beside me. I never knew his name. He was a thin man of about fifty; a dirty band round his forehead kept his long hair out of his face. With a knitting needle, he impaled a lump of the sticky brown mixture from a tray and held it over a candle. When it began smouldering, he put it in the bowl of my pipe. I sucked on the long stem and exhaled. He nodded, and got up and left me.