We make a special effort, hard pushing through the dire terrain. Until we rest on a small hummocky tussock and can see more of the sky, lemon scudding clouds and the moon licked clean underneath, creamy like taking a milk foil bottle top off when the fat rises to the top. From here the party mad people, dancing and drugged stand out alone in a ring around their fires and the wicka-Belinda, goggling her fruity eyes, watching her horses, the fake unicorns trampling around, held in the unity of that ring by someone’s power of will, I don’t know, maybe the Professor’s power of will. They are rowdy and shocking, making themselves heard and now they are nude but at least up here we can listen to ourselves thinking.
“What time is it?” asks Katy, the child.
It was almost half past eleven and midnight was our marker again.
The dancers sing:
I beg you to hold me
while I am slippery
between her and the Indescribable Witch
then such a grand grown up lady
in this valley between her thighs
out of the fire come essences
weather and the money
out of the fire comes
everything
forced to go against the Indescribable Witch
and get bruised in her service
We’ll leave you here, to practise
your progress of stories
while I get my thoughts together, pack a bag
a tempest’s coming up
with long afternoon walks and expensive boxes
of chocolates
the beckoning waves
let the devil
let the devil
take the rest.
I had this goddamn throwback or is it they call it a flashback, yes. I had this flashing back anyway in all the brilliance and plumy fury of our vigil and the singing and we were alone with our thoughts of god bless Belinda. I saw me and Belinda at Leith Walk Juniors, which is still there, looking a lot smaller these days, grey beside the extra red of the post sorting office. Me in school with no legs and even smaller, Belinda already fat and spending break times cramming her face with sweeties I swear she would give you anything though, even her last bit of chocolate. And he would fling herself over the railings if she heard the ice cream van coming. The kids would laugh and call there she goes and she would vault with extra cunning prowess over those railings and come back with a wafer ice cream sandwich, cream all around her mouth.
I was living at the foot of the Walk and Belinda would come to eat with us. I think she had it rough at home, especially while her brother was away and gone a-soldiering. We bonded as girls at school when one of her fathers says to his daughter, “You’re hanging aboot with a lassie with nae legs. A kraut and a paki with no legs tae boot!” And the other’s father says to his daughter, “Jesus God, Astrid, that girl is a monstrous blemish. A size she is, my eyes, what a size!” Yet she came to ours, to our flat above the launderette where my mother kept everything going, churning and churning, everything clean.
Belinda saw her first UFO with me. We walked and toiled up Arthur’s Seat up all the crags and it was tough work for us with a chair and much extra ballast to heave and push. We looked out over the city and the docks and the castle and we let it get darker and later than we ought and we got scared. And it was—is it a comet? Is it a bird or is it a plane? But it was none of those and it was Belinda’s first sign and glimpse of her visitors.
Ah, my eyes were always duff and no good. I squinted and squirmed, but Belinda said that the lights had passed. Jesus God.
After midnight the moon was clouded over and the revels hadn’t ended. The group on the small, separate hill waited a half hour.
At last Astrid said, “Look at those cocksuckers. Still dancing and blazing. Have they no respect for the dead?”
Wendy actually flinched at the word ‘dead’. That’s what it took, though. Someone had to say the word, and brutally break the spell.
“That’s that then,” Timon turned on them with a smile. “We’ve seen her off in style. I reckon she’s with Marlene and Pat and Wendy’s mum and they’re having a whale of a time somewhere. Somewhere much more fun than this.”
“More than that lot could ever have,” said Katy, nodding at the unicorn people.
Down there they were torching the wicker effigy. There was a puff of luminous flame, small exploding fruits and gourds and a nimbus of burning leaves, pulling Belinda into horrible life. “I want to go back,” Astrid said. “I want to go back to the hotel.”
Katy started to push her through the grass and down the hill. Wendy and Timon were lingering. “We’ll see you there,” Wendy said quietly. Astrid nodded and waved Katy on.
“I know we were a joke,” said Timon. “When we were set up, when everyone waited to see us meet. I would see she was fat and she would see me and maybe it would be a shock I was black. But we’d told all about ourselves really. We already knew that we loved each other. And all the visitor business, we knew that made us jokes, too. But we didn’t care.” They watched the fires. Then they watched Astrid and Katy vanish into the dark fields, hotel-bound. Faintly, Astrid’s voice: “Jesus God!” in frustration. They watched the revels again. Belinda’s vast dummy caved in, her rib cage cracking in numerous golden splinters and gouts of flame spurting up.
“I only wish I had my book,” he said.
Wendy bit her lip.
“Belinda and me were jokes before we even met,” he said. “Only
