The Vail, the overland explorers, the iron prospectors, the expeditions to the Red Ocean, all passed through Derry and were written up by our Songfabrik.
The Star family possess off-world music books and a great
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register of tunes collected from the memories of the people. A
melody is a frail thing but it can live almost forever. We are stingy
with our tunes and for the News Ballads we stick to well-known
sing-alongs: Godsave, Botbay Variants, Henshen, Otchi, Yellsub.
I’m sure you would know all of these melodies if I sang them to you
or put down the solfa. But all stories cannot be told and all music
cannot be transcribed. Every balladmaker has one or two of these
hidden tales and mine is one of the strangest.
I am an orphan; I was raised by my Auntie Fan Kells, who is a
skin artist; we moved to Derry from Pebble fifteen years ago and
she opened the Old Glory Tattoo Parlor at Third Wharf. Seven
years ago, when I was still in apprenticeship she sent me a tip-off.
News is a precious commodity, first come, first sung. I went down
to the Old Glory as soon as ever I got Fan’s message and found her
working on a big sailor girl who favoured scrolls and naked musclemen. The customer lay and groaned in a lather of blood, sweat and colour and Fan said, hardly raising her eyes from the needle:
‘Dag Raarri was here. He thinks he has found an old friend.’
Dag Raam is a dour captain who plies the Western Sea. In those
days he was captain of a trimaran freighter out of Derry. His old
friend didn’t sound very promising; Fan laughed at the way my face
fell.
‘Look by the file chest,’ she said. ‘I dug out a tracing for him.’
Fan keeps perfect records. Identity is important in Rhomary.
Every design, from the simplest star to an aerial combat of starships
and dragons in three colors, is noted on a slip of jocca paper or a
kelp transparency and laid in the file chests. She had taken out two
old jocca slips, brown with age; both showed the same pattern, a
star in red and blue; both had been made twenty years before. The
name on one slip was David Raam, on the other Willem Hill. With
a nickname in brackets: Willem (Hilo) Hill.
I felt my knees grow weak as if I were starting a song show at a
street corner before a huge crowd. Hilo Hill was dead. He had been
dead for fifteen years. Hilo Hill had sailed with Hal Gline aboard
the Seahawk, furthest west in the Red Ocean. I knew the names of
every sailor who had been brought home alive when the expedition
foundered. We had written up these brave boys and girls at the
Songfabrik until they were practically household words. But Hilo
Hill had not come home.
‘Where?’ I asked shakily.
‘Moon Lane, four and twenty,’ said Fan. ‘Hold steady, there’s a
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good girl. Nearly done with the torso.’
I was ready to rush off without another word but I realised this
was just the hot-headed reaction old Ju p had warned against in
news-gathering.
‘Whose house?’ I asked. ‘This is a fine address.’
‘Daughter of the customer,’ said Fan. ‘Ruby Hill Mack. Widow of
Stablemaster Mack.’
The present customer turned her head with a stifled groan and
peered at me with a gap-toothed smile.
‘Smarts a little,’ she said. ‘Play us a tune, little one. Take me mind
off the suffering.’
So I played a shanty on the guitar and sang a few verses and
earned half a credit. It turned out to be one of the songs about the
Seahawk, Gline’s ship. Tune of Troyzar.
‘The wild red waves they bear no sign
To mark the grave of bold Hal Gline . . .
I set out for Moon Lane with beating heart.
Number four and twenty was a big white daub palace like the other
houses in the street. Moon Lane is built up on one side only so that
the residents can have a perfect view, far out over the shadowed
waters of our beautiful Western Sea. The house suggested riches:
good food, wax candles, soft cloth, flowers, fruit and wine. The sort
of folk who lived here might travel to Rhom ary city, hire yachts,
race parmels from their own stable, and employ musicians. It was a
far cry from the wild red waves and the tattoo parlor. In fact no servant opened the door, only a handsome fellow about my own age; he had pressed curls, a knotted lace vest, grey leather boots.
‘You’re out of time,’ he said, looking me up and down, ‘the
homecoming was yesterday.’
Oh he was a sailor-girl’s dream, a spoiled silverwing, back from
the city. Homecoming parties for these schoolers, back for the summer holidays, had been raging on in the houses of Moon Lane and Connor Crescent for eight days now. I had worked at four of them.
I even had a name for this party-goer who stood before me: Rayner
Mack, son of the house.
‘I came about another . . . homecoming,’ I said, smiling. ‘May
it please you if I speak to M am Ruby Mack?’
‘Come in,’ he said. ‘My mother will be down soon.’
I had not been in the spacious house a third of an hour when 1
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knew something better than he seemed to do. The Widow Mack
had less money than most in this street. There was one servant, a
gaunt woman left over from better days. I could see gaps on the
walls where tapestries, paintings or plate had been taken down.
Sold, I guessed, to pay for Rayner’s fancy education at one of the
M erchants’ schools in Rhomary, and for his boots, his hair-do and
his homecoming party with hired musicians.
‘Since you’re here,’ he said, ‘you’d better play me a tune, little
balladmaker!’
We stood in a fine room, rundown and dusty in the corners. I
saw myself in a m irror of polished bronze . . . that wouldn’t last
long . . . and was not too pleased with the sight. I am short, thin,
dark; my red cloak looked tawdry, my guitar lacked ribbons, I was
dusty from the streets of Derry. I hated my profession at that
moment.
‘W hat’ll it be, young sir?’ I said cheerfully. ‘A love song? A racing
ballad? O r what about a great song of the sea?’
I wondered where they had stashed their granddad. Was it a false
alarm?
‘Play Devil Dance!’ said his lordship.
It was the latest snapper; I had played it ten times over at the
homecoming parties. As I played he tapped his boots on the tiles; it
pleased him to have a musician all to himself. W hen the dreary
acrobatic piece was done he fumbled at his plaited sporran for a
coin but I held up a hand.
‘No need,’ I said. ‘You can do me a greater service. Is there an old
man come to stay in your house?’
Rayner Mack looked puzzled. Then he smiled and sighed,
swinging one booted leg over the arm of his carved chair.
‘Thank our stars!’ he said. ‘Are you some family of that stinking
old critter that M a keeps in the warden house? You’re welcome to
him!’
‘Sorry to
disappoint,’ I said. ‘I just want to have a word with him.’
A word?’ said Rayner. ‘Old Billy is mad, you know, as well as
unwashed. But Ma has a strong sense of duty . . . she thinks he
might be a former servant of our stable. Why would you be
interested? We had a seafaring man here to visit him, but now a
balladmaker? At least you’re prettier than Cap Raam . . . ’
I kept smiling but the situation made me queasy.
‘Routine visit,’ I said. ‘We interview these old persons in hope of a
sailor’s yarn or a melody. May I see him?’
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He shrugged and led the way through the quiet house. We
crossed the kitchen where the old housekeeper dozed by the big un lit range, and went out into the garden. It was wild and beautiful, with blossoming fruit trees and gnarled sea pines. We came to a
trellis covered with climbing lilies in white and blue. Rayner was
about to open a gate in the trellis when I clutched his arm and we
stood still. The sound was as strange as anything 1 had heard, a
thin, purring hum that meandered up and down some scale of its
own. It was a giant insect, a fiddle string teased with a broken bow,
the wind sighing through the bones of the Vail.
‘I told you,’ said Rayner, ‘mad as a rutting dry-hog . . . ’
But the sound held him too; he opened the trellis gate very
quietly. An old man sat on the grass beside a palm-thatched garden
house; one leg was bent under him, one held out almost at right
angles to his body. He was thin, wrinkled and burnt dark brown
from head to foot; he wore nothing but a breech clout and his feet at
least were very dirty . . . big, ugly feet, splayed, black and filthy
with mud. He was holding his right hand cupped before his face
and I saw his rubbery cheeks bulge out as he made the queer hum ming sound, his music. The strangeness did not go away at the sight of the old man, it became worse. He gave off not so much a
stink as waves of eerie isolation. Old Billy was in another world,
alone in his dreams.
‘Where was he found?’ I whispered to Rayner.
‘Bellfar, at the fish-drying plant.'
I still had my hand on his arm and I felt him tremble. He was
afraid of the old man and it took away all his artifice.
‘My M a sailed on a cruise with a party of ladies,’ he went on,
whispering. ‘They came to the harbour at Bellfar and this old
creature claimed that he recognised her. She took pity on him, like
I said, and brought him back, right in the hold of the cruise ship. A
drifter, of course, a real old sand-crawler from the back of beyond.’
I felt the whole set-up crawl on my skin and I was ready to run
for it, hand the whole scoop to Jupiter Star. Rayner really did not
know who the old man might be. Then there was the strangeness of
the old man himself and above all Bellfar . . . furthest eastern outpost of the Rhomary land at the tip of that narrow grey lake called the Billsee.
Beyond Bellfar there is nothing except one last oasis called, just
fancy, Last Chance. There is the sandy desert, the howling wilderness that borders the Rhomary land in the east, just as it is
The ballad o f H ilo H ill
117
bordered by the stony desert in the north and the blistering heat of
the tussock plain in the south. The only way out of our settled areas
lies west, over the Long Portage, a semi-desert dotted with oases
and salty springs, to the river Gann and the Red Ocean. Explorers
have, as you might say, gone west. Gline’s first great feat was the
transportation of his ship, the Seahawk, over the Long Portage;
then he sailed in the Red Ocean to the edge of a map he made him self and swore that he had discovered another ocean. He did not live to sail on it. And fifteen years ago Hilo Hill had sailed with
Gline. There was something here so enormous that I did not dare
put it into words.
Suddenly I wanted nothing more than to talk to the old man and
hear his story. I was ready to push Rayner Mack out of the trellis
gate. He went at last and I stepped not too quietly over the grass. I
spoke once or twice but the brown figure did not stir. I sat down on
the grass three metres away and plucked a few chords on my guitar.
The music stopped; the old man lowered his hand and blinked
slowly several times in my direction. His eyes were brown and clear
but without much expression. He reached out, picked up a cotton
poncho that lay nearby and shucked it over his head. He used his
right hand only and I saw that his left hand lay clenched oddly in
his lap. His movements were quick and smooth. I saw the tattoo
mark on his right forearm: the star in red and blue.
‘M r Hill?’ I whispered. ‘Hilo?’
He heard me well enough, wriggled his scanty eyebrows, drew in
his trailing leg and sat in a more hum an posture. I questioned.
How did he come back? Where had he been? Could he say his
name? He bent his head a little, stiffened his neck and wagged his
chin from side to side. I might have been talking to a mud wall.
Then he cocked his head to one side and directed the gaze of one
bright eye. The guitar.
I took it up and began to play. I played softly and sang and played
again. At last I played the shanty, the old favourite that I had just
rendered for the suffering sailor-girl down at the Old Glory. I
wanted to see a tear roll down the old man’s cheek. Certainly he
looked sad; there was a creaking and clicking on his throat, he
uttered a long, woolly collection of sounds as weird as his music.
He turned to me and said in a rusty voice:
‘You Ruby’s gal?’
‘No sir,’ I said. ‘I’m Catlin Kells, balladmaker. Fan Kells is my
auntie.’
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I pointed to his tattoo and said again:
‘Fan Kells, the skin artist. Do you remember?’
‘Dag Raam was here!’ he said. ‘O . . . protect me! Who’s coming
next?’
I had lost a word, a soft whistling word.
‘Who . . . what . . . should protect you?’
He repeated the word and I tried to get it. Ha-hwoo-dgai. When I
said it he looked at the sky, touched a finger to the tip of his nose
and laughed once, a sharp guttural bark of laughter.
‘Shall I play some more?’ I asked.
W hen he laughed at the sky I could see the inside of his mouth,
discoloured, almost black, and his teeth, still strong and white.
im a I said, sharply.
He did not fall for it. He looked at me again, did his slow blink
and said distinctly: ‘Hirro. Hirro. Hrrr.’
The last sound was nothing but a roll of the r following the heavy
H. I repeated the sounds and for the first time he was pleased. Fie
smiled a sweet normal smile and smoothed his blue cotton poncho.
Suddenly he leaned sideways, snaked out his right hand and
grasped my wrist.
‘Gal,’ he said, ‘make sure no one knows. Make sure. She might get
wind of it still. . . ’
‘Who? Who is this you’re afraid of?’
But he had gone far away. He stuck out his leg again, balanced a
curl of dried jocca leaf
between the fingers of his right hand and began to make his music. I waited for some time and then left his garden enclosure.
I found her standing outside the trellis, watching him intently
through the vines. Ruby Hill Mack was about forty years old and I
could see at once how the old man had recognised her. She was a
beautiful woman; her name suited her rich colouring. She had
creamy skin, blue-black hair and speaking brown eyes. She was a
nice lady too, distraught, vague; she had a way of moving her hands
that I’ve often seen in the ladies, the chatelaines of Moon Lane but
rarely in sailors or parmel drivers.
‘Oh what do you think?’ she asked. ‘Is it . . . Can it be . . . ?’
I lied. I believed already that this wily, weird old person was Hilo
Hill and no other, but I said:
‘I’m not sure, Mam.’
‘Oh you did so well . . . Catlin is it? I never saw him so moved
. . . Could you . . . ?’
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119
‘I’ll come again,’ I said.
Not a word about balladmaking, about news, invasion of privacy
and the money we paid for it. Not a word about the fact that by
mentioning the name ‘Hilo Hill’ I could bring every balladmaker at
the Songfabrik to her door, plus a horde of independent hacks and
gawpers. Perhaps she was a bad manager, perhaps she was simply a
lady who trusted me. We went back through the rundown mansion
and at the front door she said: ‘About Rayner . . . I wonder . . . ’
‘Wait,’ I said. ‘He’ll understand, M am. Believe me. Don’t say
anything yet.’
Outside, two houses away, I could have blown the whole discovery. I met Alvez and Trill, two balladmakers from the Songfabrik who had just played in a bridal. Alvez shook spittle from his flute
and said: ‘W hat’s on at the Mack heap then?’
‘Nix,’ I said. ‘I was out of time for a homecoming.’
I saw the old man fifteen times over a period of half a year. Besides
Dag Raam, the sea captain, I was his only.outside visitor. Sometimes I came away from the garden house singing, sure that this would be the greatest tale since Flip Kar Karn arrived in his hot-air
balloon. Yet it was slippery, disappointing work. I was no mind-
Strange Attractors (1985) Page 16
