“Brilliant! So you’re Stu Greene.” Neal reached into his jacket pocket and removed the CDs I’d labelled. He handed them to Stuart, who looked at them and froze.
“Everything okay?” asked Neal.
“Neal, who labelled these CDs?”
“Um, Raymond here. What’s up?”
“It’s just that Raymond spelled ‘Harry’ with an ‘e’ instead of an ‘a’.” He held it up for Neal to check out.
Neal looked and said, “H-E-R-R-Y. Huh. Don’t see that every day now, do you?”
Harry is a male given name, the Middle English form of Henry. It is also sometimes used as a diminutive form of Harold or Henry. It is never, ever, ever spelled with an ‘e’.
Now, I like to think of myself as an educated bloke. I wasn’t head boy or Stephen fucking Hawking or anything, but Stuart—what a dick.
“Jesus, Gunt, how the fuck could anyone be stupid enough to spell Harry with an ‘e’?”
“It’s not as bad as you’re making it out to be.”
“Not as bad? How did a useless imbecile end up on my payroll?”
“That’s deeply unfair, Stuart. I was a bit drunk at the time.”
“Drunk? Gunt, even if my brain had been raped by a gallon of tequila, I’d still have the fucking wits to spell ‘Harry’ properly.”
At that moment, a rusty, windowless van used for hauling medium-sized groups about the airport was approaching. On its sun-rotted leather seats lounged a spent-looking array of executives, plus a handful of stocky types who could only be cameramen—hod carriers in any other period in history—torsos lopsided from decades of tramping across deserts and mountains and battlefields and swamps with a Sony always over the right shoulder, their livelihood also betrayed by their nylon cargo pants, capable of conveying a nineteenth-century hunt’s worth of crap from airport to airport to airport, fully washable and dryable in any hotel room on earth in under three hours.
Stuart whistled for the driver to stop, then bellowed, “You! Bus people! Come over here!”
Neal studied the passengers more closely as they disembarked. “They’re looking a bit wasted.”
Stuart agreed. “They’re all of them drunk and pissed off. There’s been an international incident that’s utterly screwed up our supply shipments. Some dipshits somewhere let off a bomb. Airports are shut down all over.”
“Bombs go off all the time,” Neal protested.
“An atomic bomb.”
Neal and I looked at each other. “Well, that’s different, isn’t it?” Neal said. “Where’d they drop it, Stuart?”
“No one’s saying. Rumour is Hawaii. Anyhow, this bunch here has been drinking away the boredom all night while we wait for word about supplies and tech support staff.”
Neal asked about the luxurious TV network yacht.
“It was en route from Hawaii, but now it’s delayed because there’s an exclusion zone for all boats.”
“Probably stuck in the trash vortex,” I said.
Stuart had no time to reply, as twenty of my new co-workers, at the tail end of a long drunken night, staggered towards him from the rusting wagon. And then one more figure came bouncing along. Oh good fucking Christ: Fiona.
“Raymond? Raymond! Could that really be you? You look like Rock Hudson with late-stage AIDS.”
Stuart smirked.
An executive beside Fiona said, “Who’s that, then?”
She replied, “That’s Raymond Gunt. You’ll be working with him. He’s a dreadful human being.”
“People!” shouted Stuart, holding up the offending CDs. “I ask you, would any of you, even at the end of a five-day meth binge, ever be stupid enough to spell ‘Harry Potter’ with an ‘e’?”
Someone said, “Why are you asking us?”
“Because your new co-worker here, Patient Zero, actually did.”
“Thank you, Stuart,” I said. “Might I add in my defence that I was cunted out of my brains on booze?”
Someone near the front said, “I still don’t know, mate. Pretty fucking stupid if you ask me.”
“Who died and made you Alex fucking Trebek?”
“Watch your language!” shouted Stuart. “There are ladies present.”
“But you swear yourself!”
Ignored.
Everyone melted away to various destinations. Fiona left too, scurrying to a nearby private jet. Joy to the world! I did watch her closely, however, and because of this I saw her hand the pilot a bag of money. How do I know it was a bag of money? Because I know Fiona. When we were together, we purchased truck-loads of blow all the time, and she has a very specific way of handling money; her body language changes when she’s in contact with cash. She keeps her hands close to her stomach and then passes the wad to its recipient in a direct line from her belly button. Of course, she might only be scoring coke from the pilot, but it was a pretty big bag, so … I made a mental note and left it at that.
Sarah, meanwhile, peeked out from behind Stuart, looking fresh as the dawn, her breasts as insistent as rising dough. “Looks like I’m missing out on some fun here.” She gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Raymond, you poor thing, you’re sunburned! Let me go get some lotion from the medic. I’ll warm it up to just above body temperature so that it feels nice when I put it on you.”
From behind, Neal jabbed me in the ribs with his index finger.
Sarah went off to get some lotion, and Stuart said, “Gunt. Stop brain-raping Sarah. I am on to you, buddy.” He looked at his watch and cursed as he got back into his pickup truck, muttering, “Fucking atomic bombs.” He peeled away from us.
Me, Neal and Elspeth remained on the tarmac. Fiona’s jet was just taking off.
“Ooh,” said Elspeth, pointing at Sarah, now far down the tarmac in pursuit of lotion. “Play your cards right and you’ll be stonkering her something quick. Watch out for that Stuart fellow, though.”
“So what do we do now?” Neal asked.
“While I await my lotion, why not investigate …” I looked at a sign, “… Bonriki International Airport.”
28
Welcome to Bonriki International Airport!
Gateway to the city of Bairiki. Whether you’re
passing through or staying for a while, be happy
and enjoy our fine island hospitality!
•
Miss Phibbs’s Restaurant and Foot Clinic now
open after tsunami repairs. Perhaps enjoy a delicious
meal of octopus, coconut, tinned luncheon meat
and hen’s eggs. Or maybe excellent entertainment
on a colour television set.
“Satellite dish since 1994.”
•
Bridge to North Island is now out of commission
due to salt corrosion. Truck access now only
at lowest tide.
•
Remember: condoms promote licentiousness,
so reconsider before using.
•
Coral is pretty, but it cuts you easily and then
infection will set in and you will die.
Remember sand shoes when visiting reefs.
•
Kiribati is a full voting member of the United Nations.
Kiribati has few natural resources. Commercially viable phosphate deposits were exhausted by 1979, when it gained its independence from England. Copra and fish now represent the bulk of production and exports. Tourism provides more than one-fifth of the country’s GDP. It’s a very, very dull place.
Dear al Qaeda,
If you ever feel like putting some of your young lads on planes again, I have just the place for you. Snuggled in the warm waters of the central Pacific, Bonriki Airport has about as much protection as a leftover plate of spaghetti in the fridge covered with a layer of cling film. The facility’s security team is composed of mange-ridden, malnourished stray dogs whom the natives take great relish in taunting with hurled coral chunks. And I wouldn’t worry too much about CCTV cameras or the lik
e. Chances are greater than not that the power is out. Honestly, you could stuff 200 pounds of Semtex up your gary in this place and no one would ever notice your payload. These people are massive.
Yours,
Raymond Gunt
29
“Sarah, we just passed our hotel.” (The hotel, I might add, resembled a detention facility in a cruel post-architectural world of cinder blocks and corrugated zinc sheeting. Dumpiness notwithstanding, I very much wanted to be there.)
Sarah was rubbing my head with PABA lotion. “We’re going into town for supplies.”
“Why now? Shouldn’t we at least check in first?”
“No. I think it’s best to go now.”
The last thing I wanted was to displease Sarah, so I shut up.
Sarah, Neal, Elspeth and I were in a fifteen-seater Toyota van driven by a local. Owing to the escalating global nuclear situation, the private jet that brought us here was forbidden to leave. Elspeth had now joined us as a prisoner of Bonriki until things cooled down. Most everyone was waiting for the heli-evacuation unit to take us to the island so, nuclear crisis or not, we could start shooting our dreadful, dreadful, dreadful TV show.
Kiribati was basically Wake Island covered with palm trees, grey, highly flammable-looking thatched roofing, feral dogs, rusty trash barrels and thousands of poor people smiling, though God knows why.
Neal said, “Supposedly, Kiribati will be the first country on earth to vanish with global warming. Saw that on the telly last year.”
“I can just imagine the ripple effect that news must be having at the United Nations,” I said. “Kenya and Kuwait will have to sit beside each other. Sparks will fly.” Sarah’s hands on my scalp felt heavenly, particularly when she worked the base of my skull—such tenderness. It almost made me forget the X-ray sunlight and the stop-and-go jerking of the van on a road that suddenly became blocked by goats.
I yelled a command to the driver. “Fucking hell. Just throw rocks at them.”
“No, we must let goats do their thing.” Our driver, apparently, found goats sacred.
Sarah stopped her scalp rub and turned to Elspeth. “Why don’t you help me out with my shopping list. I can’t wait to see the delicious local treats this magic island has to offer.”
I was horrified. “No! My head isn’t fully lotioned!”
“Oh, Raymond! I’ll finish working on you later. Come on, Elspeth. My paper and stuff is at the back of the bus.”
Elspeth was excited. “I wonder if they sell bikinis here, though I’d have to shave me lady bits first. Looking a bit like a barber shop floor at the moment.”
As the women sat in the rearmost seats and bonded over shopping, Neal and I stared at the goats. “Neal,” I asked, “have you ever, you know, wondered what it might be like with, well, not a person?”
“You mean a goat, Ray?”
“Neal, those are your words not mine, and I’m appalled that that’s the first place your mind went—but a goat is as good a place to start as any.”
“So you are, then, thinking about goats?”
“No, no, I don’t want to fuck a goat, Neal.”
“Sheep, then?”
“Don’t be coarse. I’m trying to have an elevated conversation here.”
“So you’re wondering in a scientific sense about the physical sensation of the act?”
“Well, sort of.”
“Technically, a sheep would be better than a goat.”
“Why is that, then?”
“A sheep’d take instructions from you.”
I let that sink in.
Neal asked, “Ray, you are talking about a female sheep, right?”
“No, Neal, there’s nothing wrong with fucking a male sheep, because if I did find something wrong with it, that would mean I was insensitive to the needs of the gay sheep community, and, of course, I believe in equality and peace and freedom for everybody—Oi! Benders forever! But for the purposes of this discussion, yes, female sheep. Definitely. And definitely not lambs. Because that would be wrong.”
“Well, you couldn’t really just hop the fence and go at it. You’d have to establish some level of trust first.”
“Neal, I really think taking a ewe on a date is too much effort for too little payoff.”
“Like she might change her mind at the end—and then you’re out ten quid for a plate full of clover and a zinc bucket of lager.”
“Neal. Stop right now.”
“You’re right. Probably all you’d need is a pile of alfalfa to keep the front end busy, and maybe a leash to make sure it doesn’t bolt when you get to the good part.”
“That sounds about right.”
“I feel like I’m on the Discovery Channel, decoding animal intelligence like this. You bring out the best in me, Ray.”
“I’m touched, but back to our sheep. You’ve got past the first hurdles and now you’re, well, ready to make the big move.”
“Wait, Ray—condom or unprotected? I don’t want to get mad cow or anything.”
“Neal, I think you should be more worried about your date. She’s only been grazing in a meadow for a few years, whereas you’ve basically been the clogged bacterial centrifuge of West London since the days of Adam Ant.”
“Slight change of subject, Ray. What about all the daggy bits around the sheep’s arse? Kind of a turnoff, I’d say.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
At this point our driver lurched around to stare at us, purple of face, then screamed at us to get out of his van.
Déjà vu.
“Sorry, mate, what are you talking about here?”
“You are unholy. I cannot have you in my van. Leave right now.”
“What is he talking about?” Sarah called from behind us.
I was the picture of innocence. “No idea. We were just talking about our love of animals, and—boom! He’s lunging at Neal and me, asking us to leave his van.”
Our driver escalated his screaming and began making threatening gestures at us. But Neal, with his dancer’s grace, seized the man and pushed him out the door in a flash, then leaped out after him. On the littered road’s edge, he put a chokehold on the incensed driver to the point where the man’s eyes bulged, his mouth frothed and his oxygen supply was depleted enough to make him less of a threat. “Looks to me like we’re at a standstill,” said Neal, whereupon a motorcycle, sounding like an amplified coffee grinder, zoomed up from behind us at some insane speed and ploughed directly into our driver, hurling him like a Muppet off into a taro shrub. The biker stopped—a young Australian hostel-goer.
“Fuck me! He’s not dead, is he?”
We all stared at the body, which seemed utterly still.
“Looks like a goner,” said Elspeth.
“No, he’s breathing,” said Sarah.
“Neal, you’re a former paramedic,” I said. “What should we do here?”
Neal crouched to do an assessment. “He’s definitely not dead. Doesn’t seem to be anything broken. Let’s call the police when we get into town.”
Our Aussie friend was relieved. “You guys are the best.”
“Always happy to help a fellow traveller.”
“Good on ya. Here’s four hits of Ecstasy, and if you get desperate, there’s exactly one flush toilet on this island that works. It’s in the Mormon high school building. If you act all serious and pretend to like God, you’re in, and there’s five minutes of heaven awaiting you. Cheers!”
And our fellow traveller was off.
30
We looked at the pills in their Ziploc baggie. I was about to tuck them into my pocket when Neal said, “You know, Ray, why not give these pills a try right now?”
I considered this for a moment. “Hmmmm … You know, Neal, I like your attitude. Indeed, let’s say ‘yes!’ to life.”
We each popped one; they tasted bitter, sort of metallic. Sarah and Elspeth declined, and we got back into the van, Neal at the wheel. He asked, “Sarah, why do we have to b
uy groceries? Someone in your position shouldn’t be doing scoutwork like that.”
“Because of the nuclear crisis, all food shipments to the island from Australia and Fiji have been stopped indefinitely. The locals don’t know this yet—we have a one-hour head start to secure all we need for the shoot. We have to clean the stores out before word spreads and looting begins. Let’s just go in, max out our credit cards and exit without leaving a ripple in the water.”
The goats before us had cleared to make way for our van. Fortune was smiling on us.
Gilbertese, or Kiribati, is a language from the Austronesian family. The word “Kiribati” is just the modern rendition of “Gilberts,” after Captain Thomas Gilbert, who happened upon the Gilbert Islands in 1788. Unlike many languages in the Pacific region, Kiribati is far from extinct, and most speakers use it daily. About thirty percent of Kiribati speakers are fully bilingual, also speaking English.
FUN FACT: One early difficulty in translating books into Kiribati was references to features such as “mountain,” a geographical phenomenon unknown to the people of the islands of Kiribati (heard only in the myths from Samoa). Such adjustments are common to all languages. For example, the Gilbertese word for “airplane” is te wanikiba—“the canoe that flies.”
About 107,500 people speak Gilbertese, as follows:
In Kiribati: 98,000
In Fiji: 5,300
In Nauru: 1,700
In Solomon Islands: 1,230
In Tuvalu: 870
In Vanuatu: 370
In Ooga Booga: 13
Okay …
I’m not proud of what happened next, but history demands a full account.
I remember beginning to giggle as we pulled into an appalling slum. “A slum?” says I. “How can there be a slum in the middle of the tropical Pacific? What the hell?”
Neal was agog. “Ray, this is Betio! The magic slum of the Pacific! I saw it on BBC4 at the Russian Kum Guzzling Traktor Sluts’ lounge when they were giving me a pedicure. All the islanders living here were relocated from their old coral atolls because of the nuclear testing. But there’s fuck all for anybody to do here, so they sit in squalor for a living. Is that a verb … to, uh … squalor?”
Worst. Person. Ever. Page 12
