69 Things to Do With a Dead Princess (16 page)

I could feel the blush blooming across my buttocks after the first hot slap, which was quickly followed by a second stinging blow, then a third, fourth and fifth. At this point a couple in their 20s emerged from the trees. Alan told them to strip and I have to admit that I was surprised when they obeyed. Alan ordered me and the girl to rub our pussies together but after no more than a few minutes pulled us apart. I was set up on the recumbent next to Dudley so that the boy could lick me out while his girlfriend gave Alan a blow job. After we’d had our orgasms, Alan took Dudley from the recumbent and got the boy to stretch out on that great flat stone. Then he made the girl lie on top 69-style and watched them bring each other off. After I’d dressed we exchanged phone numbers with this couple so that further fun might be arranged at ancient monuments. The submissives were still frolicking bollock-naked amongst the stones when we left with Dudley sprawled over Alan’s back.

Having installed Dudley safely on the back seat of the car, Alan mentioned
Paris Interzone: Richard Wright, Lolita, Boris Vian and others on the Left Bank 1946–1960
by James Campbell as a book that covered some of the same ground as
The Good Ship Venus
but was infinitely preferable. A good range of writers were featured and Trocchi was given his due. Unfortunately, as Alan observed, in Trocchi’s case simply running through his relationships with other writers wasn’t good enough because at the time he edited
Merlin
he was also a member of a little-known avant-garde group called the Lettrist International. Other members included Michele Bernstein, Guy Debord and Gil. J. Wolman. What Campbell did do adequately was demonstrate just how central Trocchi was to the Olympia Press and enough documents were quoted at sufficient length to make his tendency towards pretension and megalomania patently apparent. According to Alan these were the personality traits that made Trocchi a great writer and it is our loss that in this area he was ultimately eclipsed by his friend Debord.

Alan pulled up on the edge of Loudon Wood and Dudley was once more slung across his shoulders. We strolled down the main path before swinging left and then right. Finally we took another right, pushing our way through thick shrubbery and a moment later found ourselves in a clearing. The stone circle before us was larger than that at Aikey Brae, being about sixty feet in diameter, and while the circle itself was larger, the stones comprising it, judging from those still remaining, were smaller. The recumbent was not so massive as that at Aikey Brae but there was a strong similarity in the general outline of the two circles, as well as in their positions. Only two uprights and a flanker were still standing, the one to the west – the largest – being seven feet and two inches above ground. The circle appeared to have consisted of two concentric rings, the inner being about 50 feet in diameter but the whole was in such dilapidated condition that it is not possible to affirm this with certainty. There seemed to have been an attempt to break up some of the stones that had fallen and the ground enclosed by the circle was waterlogged and boggy. Nevertheless, given its setting in a woodland clearing, the monument possessed an eerie dignity.

Alan was all for having more sex but I refused since this would have entailed getting muddy or suffering bruises on the hard surface of the recumbent. Instead we made our way back through the wood with Dudley still slung across Alan’s shoulders. We crossed the road our car was parked on, traversed a field and headed up a hill. All the way my companion was complaining that in
69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess
there was a two-hour picnic at the Loudon Wood circle. I pointed out that unlike K. L. Callan we had not enjoyed a clear sky and full moon. Indeed it had clouded over as we made our way to the stanes. Since we were only attempting to test the feasibility of Callan’s narrative and in so doing had substituted a dummy weighted with bricks for the corpse of a dead princess, cutting the time we spent at sites was of no consequence. Our goal was only to go over the territory covered in
69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess.
That we were able to do so didn’t prove that this picaresque tale was true, merely that there was an outside chance it wasn’t false.

Alan was unable to counter the iron logic of my argument, so by the time we reached Auchmachar stone circle, or at least the little that was left of it, he’d quit whingeing. Only two stones remained of what had once been an embanked recumbent circle. Nearby was a ruined Bronze-Age long cairn. These relics were singularly unimpressive so we scampered off the hill towards White Cow Wood. As Alan strode before me with the dummy slung over his shoulder, I could see a perverse logic to tramping around this rich farmland with the corpse of a dead princess. However, given the fences and muddy fields we had to negotiate I was glad that we were merely using a weighted dummy. While Dudley might attract attention, it was quite safe for us to carry out our experiment during the hours of daylight. Had we actually made use of a corpse as K. L. Callan claimed he had done, it would have necessitated copying his modus operandi of visiting these ancient and sacred sites in the dead of night.

We identified Upper Aughnagorth stone circle easily enough although one of the remaining stones had been incorporated into a fence and leakage from a water tank was efficiently bringing about its complete obliteration. We didn’t stop longer than was necessary to take in this vandalism. Nearby was the White Cow Wood cairn circle. It is formed of a great number of comparatively small stones, rising above the ground from one foot to two and a half feet, and where stones three or four feet in length have been used, they are laid along their length on the ground, so that in no case does the height of the encircling stone reach above two and a half feet. The stones present a clear face on the inside of the circle but are backed up with earth all round. Thus the circle is formed practically of a low earthen rampart, faced on the inside with stones, the tops of the stones rising sometimes above the rampart, but very often being under it. A little east of the south, a breach has been made in the circle, the stones or their fragments being cast outside. The most remarkable feature of the circle is the tomb or stone sarcophagus placed a little north of the centre. Its exterior dimensions are seven feet by five feet and two feet three inches in height.

We stood admiring the remains of the cairn. All the smaller stones had been carried away some time in the 19th century and used in a dike. What remained was spooky, the wood around us being very thick but inside the circle the ground was bare and black. Scarcely a vestige of vegetation was to be seen among the stones that had proved too large to cart away for use in the dike, while outside moss, grass and heather grew rank and old, making it appear as if the ring had just been laid bare. My guess is that it had been recently cleared for archaeological study since there was nothing to suggest we would find it in this denuded state when we combed through the relevant passages in
69 Things to Do with a Dead Princess.

As we were preparing to leave the cairn the rain that had been threatening to come on as we made our way to the wood poured from the sky. We sheltered as best we could among the tress and Alan used this enforced break as an opportunity to talk about H. Montgomery Hyde’s
A History of Pornography.
The book would have been perfect background material to Trocchi’s work with the Olympia Press had the author resisted plodding through English laws and court cases pertaining to obscenity in such tedious detail. Hyde also made the odd
faux pas
that Alan could not resist denouncing as typically bourgeois. For example, in the second section of his first chapter Hyde suggests only the upper classes were able to read in the 18th century. As Alan pointed out, since the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie were rarely employed in the manufacture of the books they consumed, and since in order to compose type – a skill that formed an integral part of 18th-century book production – one must be able to read, Hyde’s statement was patently untrue. Perhaps, Alan allowed generously, this fault arose from Hyde taking the description of printers as the aristocracy of labour too literally. Suffice to say that since Hyde’s book was published in the 60s, some space towards the end was devoted to Maurice Girodias and the Olympia Press. Trocchi wasn’t mentioned but his novel
White Thighs
was name-checked.

When the rain eased we made our way to the car. Once Dudley had been stashed on the back seat it began to piss down again. The rain drummed out an irregular rhythm that gradually lost its insistence as we drove. The weather had lifted by the time we reached Strichen. We walked along a lane until we came to the ruins of Strichen House. Cutting through a waterlogged field towards the abandoned manor, I thought of Johnson’s sharp dismissal of the stanes we were approaching: ‘We dined this day at the house of Mr Frazer of Strichen, who shewed us in his grounds some stones yet standing of a Druidical circle, and what I began to think more worthy of notice, some forest trees of full growth.’ Things had changed since that day in August 1773, the circle had been destroyed at least twice only to be re-erected, the final time in the early 1980s after two careful archaeological surveys.

The soil became particularly boggy as we approached the ruined house and we had to edge our way around a large patch of shrubbery, which was the only piece of ground that wasn’t completely churned up by the cows that had been driven through the field very recently. As we picked our way I chewed over the few words Boswell devoted to Strichen: ‘We set out about nine. Dr Johnson was curious to see one of those structures which northern antiquarians call a Druid’s temple. I had a recollection of one at Strichen, which I had seen fifteen years ago; so we went four miles out of our road, after passing Old Deer, and went thither. Mr Frazer, the proprietor, was at home, and shewed it to us. But I had augmented it in my mind; for all that remains is two stones set up on end, with a long one laid upon them, as was usual, and one stone at a little distance from them. That stone was the capital one of the circle which surrounded what now remained. Mr Frazer was very hospitable. There was a fair at Strichen; and he had several of his neighbours from it at dinner.’

Having gone downhill through one field, we next made our way uphill through another, the circle coming into view as we did so. The stones were protected from grazing cattle by a wire fence. Both Alan and I found the stanes disappointing, although it’s difficult to say exactly why. Standing as they did atop a small hill, the setting was less impressive than a good number of the other sites we had visited. Likewise, knowing the history of the circle didn’t help. I appreciated the trouble different people had gone to in re-erecting the stones at various times, but knowing the frequency and extent of their disturbance robbed the romantic in me of certain sublime excitements I associate with the antique. Perhaps the sheer accessibility of the circle repelled me. It was the only recumbent in the Buchan area listed in all the local tourist guides. Alan sat Dudley down on a rock and suggested we talk of Boswell and Johnson. I replied it might perhaps be amusing to reprint their accounts of the trip to Scotland side by side, scene by scene, so that their two voices might undercut and rub up against each other. Alan bemoaned the conservatism of the book trade and its perference for running Boswell and Johnson’s accounts of their tour back to back.

Heading for the car we were splashed by the odd heavy raindrop. Seconds after we reached the Fiesta, the heavens opened. Our plan had been to head for the Berrybrae stone circle but, given the weather, we decided to visit Fraserburgh. It seemed likely we’d be better able to stay dry while amusing ourselves in a town. It was still pouring when we parked the car, so we walked straight into a café with windows that advertised cappuccino and espresso. The Gaggia machine was brand-new and after we’d sauntered up to the counter and asked for espressos, the waitress looked a little puzzled before suggesting that what we wanted was a cappuccino without the milk. Alan exploded, screaming that there was no such thing as a cappuccino without the milk. The waitress said in that case she didn’t know how to make an espresso. Alan yelled that this style of coffee was advertised in the window and that was what we wanted. Eventually the waitress called someone over and got instructions on what to do with the gleaming Gaggia machine in order to produce espresso. We finally got our strong black coffee in two cappuccino mugs filled to the brim.

Given the quantity of espresso we’d been served, the drinks cost very little. Alan smiled and thanked the waitress politely as she handed him some change. He wasn’t going to bother explaining the concept of espresso to a pretty girl from a small Scottish town. Life was too short and besides, the bold lines and noble simplicity of the waitress brought to mind the ox-like prose of Ernest Hemingway. Alan sipped his coffee and our conversation flitted from
A Farewell to Arms
to
A Long Time Burning: A History of Literary Censorship in England
by Donald Thomas. The latter tome covered some of the same ground as Hyde’s
A History of Pornography
but extended into the political and religious realms, as well as giving space to the merely obscene. Thomas was aware of the problem of boring readers by spending too much time on legal considerations, although there was still more law than Alan cared for. On the plus side Thomas had managed to dig up a number of amusing anecdotes from the annals of State Trials. Among the best was a passage dealing with an attempt in February 1728 to punish the publisher Edmund Curil for issuing politically sensitive works such as
The Memoirs Of John Ker
(a government spy), as well as dirty books such as
Venus In The Cloister
and
Treatise On The Use Of Flogging
: ‘This Edmund Curil stood in the pillory at Charing Cross but was not pelted, or used ill; for being an artful, cunning (though wicked) fellow, he had contrived to have printed papers dispersed all about Charing Cross, telling the people, he stood there for vindicating the memory of Queen Anne: which had such an effect on the mob, that it would have been dangerous even to have spoken against him: and when he was taken down out of the pillory, the mob carried him off, as it were in triumph, to a neighbouring tavern.’