by Iain Banks
That was it.
She showered after sport. She played squash ‘like a lethally disjointed cheetah on speed’, according to one Eng. Lit. lecturer with a bandaged ear and extensive facial bruising, to whom Alban had spoken at a party. She had a mountain bike that she stashed in the flat’s hallway, where it moulted dried mud between excursions. She had played in goal for the university women’s football team, was a demon fast bowler in the ladies’ cricket team - though what she really wanted to be was a spin bowler - and played golf occasionally with her late father’s clubs, each of which was older than she. For a few years she had rowed on the Clyde, but then given up after she’d rowed her scull right over the body of a teenage boy suicide and been thrown into the river with the corpse. She lived for climbing mountains but she had no head for heights. She’d tried rock climbing, specifically to tackle this shaming limitation, persevering beyond sense and expert advice, but the problem was not a fear that could be faced down, and so, eventually, she had accepted this and restricted herself to walking up mountains, with a minimum of don’t-look-down scrambling episodes.
She was an enthusiastic if surprisingly graceless dancer.
Alban knew of at least two male colleagues in the Mathematics Department who were hopelessly in love with her.
She had a couple of other sporadic, casual lovers besides himself, he knew - both fellow sporty types.
There had been another, but he’d died in the tsunami.
Her widowed mother also lived in the city. Eudora was a small, lively woman who worked in the Mitchell Library and who dressed and moved with an elegance Alban suspected her daughter had long ago decided never to try to match or even attempt to emulate.
‘So, Mr McGill,’ the lovely Verushka says, gently releasing his hand and bringing it up to her mouth to kiss the fingers individually once more. ‘Your family raises its hydra head again. And what is to be done?’
‘Probably nothing,’ he says, looking intently at her mouth. She has full, pale pink lips. ‘They’ll sell out, the family will fall further apart, we’ll stop pretending it all really means very much, we’ll stop having to decide whether to promote people within the family or bring in people from outside who actually know what they’re doing, so it’ll all get more efficient and lucrative and slick under the wing of the Spraint Corporation, some of us will sit on the money and retire and resort to hobbies, some will invest in their own businesses or somebody else’s and make even more, and some will do the same and go broke. Whatever it is we are, whatever it’s supposed to be worth, that’ll all . . . disperse.’ He stops looking at her mouth and looks at her eyes instead. They are open, now, and crossed. ‘What?’ he says.
‘That is not what I meant at all.’
‘You mean Beryl.’
‘Yes. What she told you.’
‘I was thinking of forgetting it; ignoring everything.’
‘You’re an idiot.’ She places his hand flat on her chest, between her breasts.
‘It’s probably nothing.’
‘So why be afraid of looking into it further?’
‘I’m not afraid.’
‘Yes you are, Alban,’ she says casually, with a smile to take some of the sting out of it. ‘You’re afraid of lots of things about your family.’
He’d gone to meet her a little after seven at the Maths building where she worked. Hers had been the only office which remained lit and occupied; everybody else was either still on vacation or had better things to do on a Saturday evening, but she was dealing with a backlog of mail and emails after attending a conference in Helsinki. They hadn’t seen each other for a couple of months and had come very close to having sex right there, but that, she’d decided, would have been unseemly (she used words like that sometimes). They’d walked smartly back to the flat.
Afterwards, he’d told her about the white finger diagnosis, crashing at the flat in Perth, Fielding’s sudden arrival with news about the family firm, and Beryl’s bedtime chat, which, for sure, had been a little alarming at first, when he’d wondered, still half asleep, why this ancient, shrivelled old woman was inviting herself into his bed, but had hardly been anything to be genuinely afraid of.
‘Well,’ he says, defensively, ‘they’re an alarming family.’
‘This you keep telling me. Mum and I have taken the girls for tea and cakes a couple of times when you haven’t been present. They were great fun.’
‘Tea?’
‘Well, drinks and cakes,’ she concedes. ‘And your parents; they were very nice.’ Andy and Leah had been passing through Glasgow a couple of years ago when he’d been staying with her. Verushka had more or less insisted on meeting up, bringing her own mum along. They’d had lunch. He’d been terrified beforehand but it had gone surprisingly well. ‘And those two old guys at Garbadale,’ she continues, ‘when we stopped off there for tea that time after doing Foinaven and Arkle—’
He remembers both mountains, and the insane, über-competitive pace she’d set on each ascent.
He also remembers both of the old guys she’s talking about. ‘They’re staff,’ he tells her. ‘Servants - not family. And I’d made damn sure Gran wasn’t at home.’
‘Well, anyway. And Fielding seemed all right.’
‘Now, Fielding really is an idiot.’
‘He’s not so bad. I think he looks up to you.’
‘Really?’ He is genuinely shocked to hear this. ‘Anyway, you still haven’t met Gran.’
‘Yes, your gran. She sounds interesting.’
‘So does chemical and biological warfare.’
‘Oh! Shame!’ she says, and darts one hand across to tweak his nearest nipple.
He hisses, rubs the offended bulb of flesh.
‘She’s your grandmother,’ she says, vicariously indignant. ‘She gave birth to your poor dead mother.’
‘And seven other freaks and nutters.’
She hovers her tweaking fingers over his still smarting nipple. He holds her wrist, one-handed, feeling her straining against him. ‘How many again?’ she asks, looking at the offended nipple with an expression of intense concentration.
‘Oh, just stop,’ he says. ‘Okay, they’re not all mad. Some are all right.’ He loosens his grip experimentally. She jerks, as though about to attack, and he clutches her wrist tightly again. She’s very strong, but he is stronger. He is already wondering how long that will last, now he’s stopped working in the forests, unless he too starts getting all sporty. Finally she laughs and withdraws her hand.
‘So,’ she says. ‘Where does your road show go next?’
‘Fielding wants to talk to my dad, and his dad. Which means London.’
‘So, are you going?’
‘Oh, I don’t think so. It’s probably pointless.’
‘Woh,’ she says flatly, deliberately monotonic. ‘Down, tiger.’
He rubs his face. ‘I’m sorry. I just can’t summon up much enthusiasm for any of this.’
She is silent for a moment. He can almost hear a carefully marshalled, logically linked series of clearly stated questions being sorted into the most appropriate analytical order inside her head. The bedrock of all these exercises tends to be the same: What are you trying to achieve? What is it you really want?
Answered diligently, each question considered separately, the gulf between the resulting answers is sometimes startling. This technique often works amazingly well, but he still resents it, every time. Sure enough, when she speaks, there is a seminar-room crispness to her delivery that he associates with earlier attempts to force him to sort out his thoughts and feelings. ‘Do you care,’ she asks, ‘that the family firm might be sold to this Corporation?’
He thinks. This is a question he has been asking himself quite a lot lately. ‘A bit,’ he says, and grimaces, knowing how pathetic this sounds.
‘Uh-huh,’ she says. He can tell she’s having to back-track here, or at least go laterally, still looking for a definitive - or at any rate useful - answer to her first que
stion before any of the subsequent ones can be presented. ‘What does “bit” mean in this context?’
‘I don’t know, I don’t know!’ he says loudly, exasperated not so much by her somehow inappropriate logicality but by his own even more point-defying uncertainty.
There is another silence. ‘Anyway,’ she says, and her voice lets him know she’s abandoned the analytical route for now, ‘you should go to this family gathering at Garbadale.’
His heart seems to leap. He feels this, and wonders at it, half hates it. He wants her permission to go to Garbadale even though he has always said he dislikes the place and usually avoids it. He wants - he still wants, even with this beautiful, intelligent, deeply affectionate woman lying in his arms - to see Sophie, to press his suit, to make his case again, to try and redeem all the past hurt by some sort of acceptance, some form of return of feeling, just one degree of acknowledgement.
And, he has to admit to himself, he wants to witness his slightly mad family again, no matter what they decide to do about the takeover offer. He used to have a sort of childish love for them all, for the institution the family as a whole represented, then he came to hate them, hate it . . . Then he tried to be accepted again, and joined the firm and felt that by doing so he was rejoining the family itself, then later still he could stand it all no longer and left them again - the partial sale to Spraint more of an excuse than anything else - but still they fascinate him, attract him, and he knows there is some immature, shameful part of him that profoundly needs their approval, and that included in that - yet beyond that - there is the need to be accepted, somehow, some time, by his girl in the garden, by his lost love, by Sophie.
Verushka is watching him. He looks away from her. ‘You know you want to,’ she purrs, partly in jest.
‘That might be a good reason not to.’
She tuts. ‘You should trust your instincts more.’
‘My instincts have got me into a lot more trouble than my reasoning ever did.’ He’s amazed at the sudden bitterness he hears in his own voice as he says this.
‘Still, you should go,’ she says, either missing - uncharacteristically - or glossing over his tone. ‘And ask questions while you’re there. Find out what Beryl’s talking about. Will she and Doris be there?’
‘Probably. Think they’ve already booked Fielding to drive them there. As a courtesy, they might even have informed Fielding regarding this, but - well - who can say?’
And then, suddenly, she says: ‘What about your old love?’
It’s asked easily enough.
‘Sophie,’ he breathes.
He looks up at the window. Verushka had placed the bed under the window specifically to get good light for reading and because she liked the way that you got little cold down-draughts from it on to your face, especially in winter. The bedroom wasn’t designed with this in mind and didn’t really work properly in that configuration, but she didn’t care.
‘Yes,’ she says gently. ‘Sophie.’
‘Apparently, yes, she’s going to be there. Fielding’s said as much. I don’t know that I trust him though. I might check with somebody else.’
‘And only go if she’s there?’
‘I don’t know.’ He shakes his head, honestly not knowing. ‘Maybe not go if she is.’
‘That would be stupid.’ Her voice is very soft. ‘You ought to go anyway, in any event.’
He looks at her, feeling himself frown. ‘You really think so?’
‘Yes, really. Who else might be there?’
‘Oh, sounds like they all will.’ The thought produces in him a strange amalgam of outright fear and nervous, adolescent anticipation.
‘And who might be there that could enlighten you regarding this mysterious “he” Beryl mentioned?’
Alban sighs. ‘Gran, obviously.’ He makes a sort of ‘tchah’ noise (Verushka shakes her head). ‘Grandad Bert is no longer with us. Uncle James - Sophie’s dad - dead too. Blake - he’s the eldest of that generation - well, he was caught with his hand in the till thirty years ago and took the FILTH route.’
‘The FILTH route? What does that mean?’
‘Failed In London; Try Honkers.’
‘Honkers?’
‘Hong Kong.’
‘Ah-ha.’
‘He’s been out there since God-knows-when. Done all right for himself - multimillionaire - but no real contact with the family any more. He wouldn’t be allowed into the EGM; he was disinherited when they found he was on the take. Can’t imagine he’d be invited to the birthday party either.’
‘But you’ve met him,’ she says, remembering an old conversation, ‘haven’t you?’
‘Sure did. Last saw him back in ninety-nine. Showed me round his skyscraper. The way he talked, he fully expected it was going to get turned into a Red Army barracks as soon as the Chinese had sorted out the paperwork. Big, gloomy, creepy kind of guy. Absolutely no advert for extreme fucking wealth whatsoever.’
‘So, who does that leave?’
‘Uncle Kennard - Fielding’s dad - and Uncle Graeme.’
She is silent for a moment. ‘And when is this party-cum-EGM?’
‘Gran’s birthday party is on October the ninth. EGM’s the day before. We’re supposed to be there by the Friday to allow for the fact that it is officially the arse-end of nowhere.’
‘There you go. Ask me nicely, I might even drive you there.’
‘Won’t classes be starting about then?’
‘I make a dramatic entrance somewhat later in the term, darling. I’d have the time. Don’t you want me to take you there?’
She owned some sort of red four-wheel-drive estate thing called a Forester. She drove punctiliously, almost primly in town, then like a rally driver on a Special Stage when she hit the open road, especially in the Highlands. He’d been alarmed the first couple of times she’d driven him anywhere at speed, but now felt quite relaxed about it, having decided she was a judicious, quick-witted and extremely fast-reacting driver. It was just that she drove rather quickly, as well - that was all.
‘I—’ He stops, flops back in the bed. They had promised from the start that they would always be honest with each other. He glances at her. Now she is propped up on one elbow, looking at him. Her right breast, under her, is a long lozenge of loveliness, her left a warm symmetrical scoop of cream. She looks curious, smiling faintly. He waves his hands, lets them fall back. ‘Part of me wants you to come with me and stay at the fucking place.’
‘This part?’ she says, briefly sliding her hand under the duvet to squeeze his cock.
‘Mm-hmm. Another part is embarrassed by my family, wants you to have nothing to do with them in case they put you off me. And . . . and another part doesn’t want to have to cope with you and Sophie in the same . . . frame of reference.’
‘Well, I was only intending to drop you there and then bugger off, frankly; canter up a hill or two, taking the tent or bivvy bag. Bunk-housing in your ghastly Scots Baronial monstrosity wasn’t really part of the plan.’
‘Oh. Okay. Sorry.’
‘Whatever, the offer stands.’ She lies back, lifting her hands up in front of her face to inspect her fingers and nails. ‘Or Fielding might take you.’ She looks over at him. ‘And do you still have that ancient smokescreen on two wheels you call a motorbike?’
‘Sold it,’ he tells her. ‘Doc said that wasn’t helping the white finger either. Had to go.’
‘So: me, Fielding, or just hire a car. No shortage of means. Just go.’ She returns to the close inspection of her hands, then reaches over to the bedside table and puts on her glasses, which have black, rectangular frames.
What do I really want? he thinks. This is, of course, an extremely good question. It was just such a pity that, life being as it tended to be, it so rarely came as part of a matched pair, with an extremely good answer.
Well, not being an idiot would be a start. He puts out his hand and strokes Verushka’s arm. ‘That’d be great if you took me. I’d really
appreciate it. Thanks.’
She glances over at him, brows furrowing over the black-framed glasses. ‘Are you sure?’ she asks. ‘The journey could be fraught with safety.’
He grins, traces the line of her full, smiling lips. ‘I’m sure.’
Alban and Sophie begin to conduct a sort of secret, technically chaste affair which only goes as far as what they agree is the rather quaint term, heavy petting - the stuff that some swimming pools still have signs saying is banned, along with running by the poolside, jump-bombing from the side, and standing on somebody else’s shoulders.
Sometimes she just openly goes with him to help with chores in the garden, sometimes she says she’s taking Scrabbles for a hack, then leaves her tethered, cropping nearby grass, sometimes she says she’s going for a walk, sometimes she says she’s going to the summer-house to read and study. Whatever; it always ends with them hidden by long grass or inside the tent-like space of a big rhododendron bush or in a half-ruined shed on the west edge of the estate or one of half a dozen other secret, private places he knows of.
It’s not simple, though. In fact, it’s very complicated.
Quite apart from the logistics involved with maintaining the secrecy, there is the ever present problem of, How far do they go? Her breasts have become gloriously familiar territory to him now; he feels he knows each pore and microscopic pucker, each tiny, soft wisp of down, and is convinced that he carries a touch-memory of their weight and giving firmness in his hands. Her nipples are like little brown raspberries, sweet and full and succulent.
A couple of times, when she’s worn a dress and his hands aren’t filthy, she has let him put one hand inside her panties, and he has found the hot, moist slit, and stroked and slipped his fingertips inside her, but she usually has to stop him before this can go on for very long - gasping, face flushed, heart pounding - because, she confesses, it’s just too much, too tempting, too likely to lead to what they can’t do because they have no condoms and are both terrified of her getting pregnant and anyway, and anyway . . .
After a week of this, she unzips his jeans and takes his cock out. She’s too rough with it at first and he has to show her how to grasp and stroke and gently squeeze it. He comes quickly in her hand and she makes a face.
