These Demented Lands by Alan Warner Page A

out before him. Both men looked at each other then the Knifegrinder’s arm went out and he killed the motorbike.
    I found myself standing outside – exactly opposite where the Hotel Charlie door was fitted above the bank of sleepers and licked plywood; misshapen bits of metal rose up to the ceiling like a geodesic dome in a scrapyard.
    Gibbon crossed to where I stood, effectively a non-invitation to the interior of the outhouse. Strangely, the door of Hotel Charlie separated us and Gibbon reached up and slid the actual perspex window of the door open.
    â€˜Aye-aye, how’re you doing?’
    â€˜I’ve brought the compensation forms.’ I unfolded one of the forms I’d reproduced on the photocopier behind the reception at The Drome. I handed it through the open window of the aircraft door.
    Gibbon removed the broken spectacles from his boilersuit pocket and put them on. The Knifegrinder came striding up behind him and began tirading, ‘It’s legitimate salvage that, it’s legal landfall, you’d best be getting a good price . . .’
    â€˜It’s up to him to put an estimate,’ I snapped.
    â€˜Well look here now, mmmm, last summer I lost a Suffolk,lovely Suffolk offof the maggots; broke its horn, maggots get in there off the fly and ate out its brains. I’ll claim back the price for that. One thousand six hundred.’
    I had to smile. Gibbon strolled off, the compensation form stretched out in his big hands as he walked forwards to the sheets on the floor with the array of scythes and implements.
    â€˜How will we get it down?’ I asked.
    Gibbon looked up at the aircraft door in the patchwork of debris, ‘Hell, man, give it a tug and it’ll come away there.’
    I took hold of the shiny door-handle and pulled: the wall area ballooned outwards. I put my palm against the section of road sign to the left and saw the bits of metal had been spot-welded and roughly rivetted, most of the holes round the rivets had rusted, with sorry, drooping stains trailing downwards.
    â€˜One thousand six hundred!’ The Knifegrinder was looking between me and Gibbon, ‘Your department’ll pay that? Man I’ll track down your bits of planes.’ He leapt up at the window on the aircraft door, hanging on with his fingers: the entire wall wobbled inwards then out on his weight, the Knifegrinder drooled at me.
    I whispered, ‘Ever hear of a propeller? I wonder how much the Department would pay for that?’
    â€˜Propeller? Propeller! Yess, I can find you one . . .’
    â€˜Yeah, but it’s gotta be the
right
propeller.’
    Gibbon was calling, ‘Hi, let go of that door or you’re going to be bringing down the whole contraption . . .’
    â€˜Propeller . . . thousands . . .’ The Knifegrinder’s eyes rolled back and he held his face up to the ceiling, the doorripped out and his weight on the window edge suddenly forced it down so he stumbled forwards and bounced off the railway sleepers; I saw him bent over, cavorting sideways: the whole wall creaked then juddered. I grabbed the door at the hinge where it had folded with the Knifegrinder’s weight, hoisted it up and stepped back from the structure as more bits began to fall – what seemed to be the aluminium hull of a flat-bottomed boat, another road sign, a bedboard: all came a-tumbling down.
    I swayed away from the crashing as sections of the ceiling collapsed. I held the left cabin door of Hotel Charlie awkwardly under my arm as I hurried up the pot-holed driveway. I passed it across a fence, clambered over myself, then lifted the door and began a short cut over the foothills to skirt the back of 96-Metre Hill, avoiding the camp of the Devil’s Advocate.
    I found the door painful to carry uphill. Soon I opened the window and placed my head through it, holding the door up with both hands, around me like a collar;