by Iain Banks
‘Don’t,’ Grier says. ‘I can look after myself.’
‘Look—’ I begin.
‘Naw, it’d be a pleasure,’ Fraser says, smiling thinly at me. ‘This shite’s tried to coorie in with Callum, then Joe, then Ellie; bout time he was taught a lesson.’
Grier takes his arm, starts to pull him away. ‘Let’s go back to the table.’
‘What if I don’t want to—’
‘Come on, Fraser, see me back,’ she says, pulling harder on his arm.
‘Aye, well,’ Fraser says, and really does do that shrugging inside the suit thing, like he’s making sure his shoulders fit inside there. He takes one step away, then he’s back in my face while Grier’s still tugging at him.
‘One fucking day, Gilmour,’ he says quietly, close enough for me to smell beer and smoke and whisky off him. ‘One fucking day.’ He wags a finger in my face as Grier pulls him away.
Slightly shaken, I return to the room. I sit down and say hi to a whole table of people I vaguely recall from school. They seem to remember me better than I remember them, which ought to feel flattering but instead feels embarrassing. One of the girls, the cute one with short black hair, looks at me like we might have once shared a moment but for the life of me I can’t recall either her name or the incident. Besides, she looks far too young. Hopefully just a false alarm, then; there are enough ghosts of misdemeanours past haunting this pile.
I head for the bar. My hands were shaking for a bit there but I think I can trust myself to hold a drink again without spilling it.
The bar staff must all be on a fag break or something. I turn my back on the bar for a moment, draw in a deep, clearing breath and take a good look round the place as the numbers start to thin out a little.
There must be some critical density of crowd that lets you see the most; too many people and all you can see is whoever’s right next to you; too few and you’ll see mostly walls, tables: just stuff. The population of people remaining in the room has probably approached whatever that ideal concentration is, and I take the opportunity to look about them.
All the local worthies, all the important people in town, are either still here or on their way out or not long departed. No schemies, no junkies, no crack whores, probably nobody unemployed or who genuinely has to worry about being out on the streets in any sense over the coming winter. Just the nice folk, those of the comfy persuasion. High proportion of sole owners, partners – junior or otherwise – shareholders, execs and professionals. People who don’t have to worry too much even in these financially straitened times. Well, how nice for us all.
Doesn’t make us bad people, Stewart…
Well, no, and we will continue to look after ourselves and to some extent those around us, in concentrically less caring levels and circles as our attention and urge to care is attenuated. The inverse square law of compassion.
But still not good enough. Not ambitious enough, not generous and optimistic enough. Too prepared to settle, overly inclined to do as we’re told, pathetically happy to accept the current dogma, that’s us. My parents wouldn’t lie to me; the holy man told me; my teacher said; look, according to this here Bumper Book of Middle Eastern Fairy Stories…
Ah, I think. I’ve got to this stage of drunkenness. Usually requires a lot of drink and just the right mix of other drugs, though I’m sure when I was younger it could be brought on with alcohol alone. It’s a feeling of encompassing, godlike scrutiny, of mountaintop scope and reach, of eagle-like inspection, though without quite the same eye to subsequent predation. And I don’t want to be noticed; it’s not, Behold me, wretches! It’s more, Fuck, behold you; what are you like?
Comes with a high degree of preparedness to use mightily broad-sweep judgements, applied with eye-watering rapidity, to condemn or dismiss entire swathes of humanity and its collected wisdom, up to and including all of it. So, not for those deficient in sanctimony or lacking in self-righteousness; definitely not for the faint or smug.
I have stood in gatherings far more opulent and distinguished, more monied and glamorous, in London and elsewhere – though mostly in London – and felt something of the same corrupted disdain for those around me. It’s a fine, refreshingly cynical feeling in a way, and one that I know separates me from so many of my peers – in all this clasping, cloying pressure to accept and agree, a few of us will always pop out like pips, ejected by just those forces that seek to clamp us in – but much as I distrust it in principle and hate it for its unearned, faux-patrician snobbery, I relish it, almost worship it.
Oh, just look at you all. Self-satisfied but still desperate to get on, do better, compete, make more. And it’s okay because this is the way everybody is, this is what everyone does, so there’s nothing to be gained by being any different. That’s the new orthodoxy, this is the new faith. There was never an end of history, just a perceived end of the need to teach it, remember it, draw any lessons from it. Because we know better, and this is a new paradigm, once more. I have a friend – again, in London – who’s a Libertarian. Actually I have a few, though they wouldn’t all call themselves such. In theory it’s a broad church with a decent left wing, but everyone I meet seems to be on the right: Rand fans. Idea appears to be that people just need to be encouraged to be a bit more selfish and all our problems will be sorted.
I don’t think I get this.
And it’s so unambitious, so weak, so default and mean-spirited; in a way so cowardly. Is that really the most we can look for in ourselves? Just give in and be selfish; settle for that because it’s what the last generation did and look how well it worked out for them? (Fuck subsequent ones; they can look after themselves.) Settle for that because it’s easy to find that core of childish greed within us, and so simple to measure the strength of it, through power and money. Or, boiling it down a bit further, just with money.
Really? I mean, seriously? This is the best we have to offer ourselves?
Fuck me, a bit of fucking ambition here, for the love of fuck. However, I am interrupted. I always am.
‘What’s it like being returned to the scene of the crime, eh?’ a slightly slurred voice asks.
I turn towards the voice and it’s Donald Murston, still in his coal-black suit but with his fat tie loosened. His face is red and shiny with drink. His expression is still pretty hard – you imagine Don’s expression will be hard until the day he dies, and possibly some time beyond – but he looks friendly enough, so long as you make the requisite allowances.
‘Mr M,’ I say, nodding to him. I can feel myself sobering up again, fast, though whether it’s fast enough is debatable. Does he know about Grier and Fraser and me and our little confrontation ten minutes ago? Has he come over to tell me to get out? ‘Glad I was able to be here,’ I tell him. I’m on the brink of adding, Thank you for that…but some rogue remaining shred of self-respect intervenes and stops me. ‘I’m glad I’ve been able to say goodbye to Joe.’
‘Aye, and saying hello to a lot of drink I’m payin for, eh?’
His glittery eyes inspect me and I try to work out if he’s actually upset or just fucking with me for a laugh. Somehow I suspect he doesn’t know anything of the micro-tussle between me, Grier and Fraser in the corridor earlier. This is just a generalised piece of intimidation – if that’s what it’s meant to be – not anything triggered by specifics.
‘Well, thanks for that too,’ I tell him. ‘I’d have been happy to pay, but…I think everybody appreciates your generosity.’
I am being so fucking polite and restrained here. I’d be quite impressed with myself if I wasn’t all too aware how horribly easy it would be to really upset him. Always assuming he isn’t really upset already, of course.
He swings an arm, sort of slaps me medium-weight on the upper arm in what is probably meant to be a bluff, manly sort of way. ‘Nah, it’s all right. Just thought it might be funny for you, being back here after that night, you know?’
‘Well, it is,’ I admit. ‘I’ve…I’ve spoken to Ellie
. Apologised to her. Took all this time to be able to do that, face to face. Which. Well…But, for what it’s worth—’
‘You behaving yourself down there in the big smoke, aye?’
Fair enough; I was starting to ramble. ‘Aye, yes. Working away, you know.’
‘You got anyone special?’
‘Eh? Well, no.’ This is a bit surprising. What age am I again? ‘No, I’m away so much—’
‘Good job we didnae catch you that night, eh?’
‘Aye,’ I say, breathing out with a sigh as I scratch the back of my neck. ‘Aye. It’s as well.’ I look into those small, sharp-looking eyes of his. I can see Powell Imrie sort of hovering a table away, hands clasped. ‘I understand why you were so angry, Mr M. I’m sorry,’ I hear myself say. Jeez, what am I getting into here? ‘You took me into your family and I—’
‘Aye, well, aye, never mind,’ Don says, seemingly made as awkward as I am with all this. ‘She’s my darling girl,’ he tells me brusquely. ‘I’ll do anything for her. Both the girls. Both of them. Always. But Ellie especially.’ His gaze shif ts from me to somewhere over my shoulder. He smiles. Real smile, too. ‘Ah, an talk of the devil, eh?’
Ellie, returned, wears smart but casual black jeans, lilac blouse and dark jacket. She walks straight up to us.
‘Dad, Stewart. You two okay?’ she asks, looking and sounding tense, wary, though hiding it well.
‘Fine, braw, good, aye,’ Don says.
‘You’re not running Stewart out of town again, are you, Dad?’ She smiles, to undercut the question a little.
‘No, well, he’s off tomorrow, that right, aye?’ Don says, fixing me with his gaze.
‘Aye,’ I say. ‘Back down the road tomorrow.’
‘And anyway,’ Don says, still looking at me, ‘we weren’t tryin to run him out of town the last time.’
I think his eyes narrow a wee bit. Do his eyes narrow a wee bit? I think they do. I think his eyes narrow a wee bit.
‘We were tryin,’ Donald says slowly, ‘to get our hands on him.’ That last sentence sounds like about half of a longer sentence, but Don has censored it.
‘I told Donald I’d apologised to you,’ I tell Ellie. My mouth is getting dry. I wonder where I left my pint.
‘Yes.’ Ellie looks from me to her dad. ‘And he did.’
‘Aye, well,’ Donald says. ‘But that doesn’t make everythin all right, does it?’
There is, technically, a question mark at the end of that sentence of Donald’s, but it’s about as vestigial as they come.
‘No,’ Ellie says. ‘Not by itself.’ She looks calmly at me, then says to Don, ‘Stewart tells me he still has feelings for me.’ Her gaze swivels in my direction while Don just stares at my nose. ‘Isn’t that right, Stewart?’
I take a moment before answering, ‘Ah. Ah, yes, that’s what I said. It’s true. I also said I didn’t expect anything—’
‘Aw aye?’ Don says, and he doesn’t sound or look even slightly drunk now. ‘That’s funny. I still have feelings for Stewart, too. I’ll bet the boys, I bet they still have feelings as well.’ He glances at Ellie. ‘But maybe no quite the same as your feelings.’
I glance over at Powell Imrie, who has his back to us now. He’s talking to Murdo, who is looking round Powell’s broad shoulder at his dad, Ellie and me, and might be trying to get past Powell to get to us. Powell seems to be placating him. No sign of the other brothers.
Ellie smiles calmly, first at me, then at Don. ‘Whereas the feelings that matter most here are mine, don’t you think, Dad?’
Don is back to staring at me. His eyes are definitely narrowed now. ‘Aye, if you say so, love.’ He seems to shake himself out of something and looks at her. ‘So what are your “feelings”?’ he asks. The quotation marks are as obviously present as the question mark, moments earlier, was effectively absent.
Ellie takes her dad’s upper arm in one hand and mine in the other, holding us like a ref before a boxing match. ‘To tell the truth, I’m not sure yet,’ she says. ‘I’m still trying to decide how I feel.’
Don shakes his head. ‘Hen, if you need to think about it, then—’
‘Actually, your dad might be right here,’ I butt in.
Don glares at me. ‘You a fuckin mind reader?’ he hisses at me. ‘You think you know what I’m goin to say? You think you know what I’m thinkin?’
‘I was trying to agree—’ I protest.
‘I don’t need you agreein with anything I—’
‘Will you both just stop?’ Ellie says gently. She squeezes my arm a little. Probably his too. ‘This is about me? Hello? And I’m still thinking, and we’ll talk about this, sensibly, I hope, when I’ve decided how I feel? That okay, Dad?’ she asks, tipping her head towards Don, her hair swinging gracefully. Don looks thoughtful. ‘Maybe,’ he concedes.
‘Stewart?’ she asks.
‘Wish I knew what this was meant to accomplish, I confess.’
‘Clearing the air,’ Ellie says, to both me and Don. ‘Just because you might not want to hear something doesn’t mean it doesn’t need saying.’ She looks at Don. ‘Dad, Stewart and I are going to take a wee walk, okay?’ She looks at me. ‘Okay?’
‘Okay,’ I say.
She looks back at Don. ‘Okay?’
‘Can’t stop you going for a walk, love,’ Don says. He seems more wary than angry now.
‘Good. Mum’s gone to her class,’ Ellie tells Don. ‘She’ll be back about four.’
‘Aye, okay. I’ll make sure the posse’s back for then.’
‘I’ll see you later, Dad.’ Ellie leans in to kiss him on the cheek. ‘Stewart,’ she says, letting go of her father and turning back towards the main doors, ‘shall we?’
17
We walk out of the hotel and down into the gardens. The af ternoon light, filtered through high cloud, makes the breaking rollers of the slack-water tide glow beneath the great standing wave of mist still banked over the margins of the sea.
As we walk down past the second terrace, between topiary and curved wooden benches, Ellie gives a small laugh, nods to one side and says, ‘I had my own little micro-fling here, an hour or two before you and Jel got jiggy.’
I look at her, eyebrows raised.
‘Dean Watts,’ she tells me. ‘Remember him?’
‘Yep.’
Ellie nods. ‘I sort of let him kiss me. Just back there,’ she says as we start down the next flight of steps.
‘Yep.’
She glances at me. ‘“Yep”?’
‘I know. I saw,’ I tell her.
She stops, and I have to stop too, so we’re facing each other, halfway down the flight of steps. ‘Was that why you went off with Jel?’ she asks. She looks as serious as she has all day.
I shake my head. ‘My guilty conscience did its best to persuade me it was, but… no. I don’t think it made a blind bit of difference, El. Too small to measure even if it did.’
‘So you saw me and Dean?’
‘Yeah. I wasn’t following you; just coincidence. But yes.’
‘Hmm. You never said.’
‘I didn’t get much opportunity before, and afterwards it would just have sounded petty, and like I was blaming you for something that was all my own work.’
She hoists one eyebrow. ‘And Jel’s.’
‘Well, yeah, though I don’t think she did it to get at you, if that’s any comfort.’ I shrug. ‘It was just two people thinking only of themselves, pure selfishness. Well, impure.’
‘Had you two ever…?’
‘No. Does that make it better or worse?’
Ellie looks down, considering. She shrugs. ‘Don’t know.’
We resume our descent of the stone stairs.
‘Grier told Jel that you’d always wanted to get off with her, with Jel, I mean,’ Ellie says. We keep on walking.
‘Did she now?’ I say, nodding. ‘I thought she might have.’
‘Jel let it slip once.’ El turns briefly to me. ‘Jel and I had
a drunken night of blame, recrimination, apologies, forgiveness and some wine-fuelled tears and hugs a couple of years back,’ she explains. ‘Met up on the sticky carpets of Jings, of all places.’ She shakes her head, eyes wide. ‘Jings. Jesus.’
In any other town this would be a sort of double oath, but not here. Jings is the less salubrious of Stonemouth’s two principal night spots, though if you stood in the other one, Q&L’s, without having seen Jings first, you could be forgiven for assuming you must already have found the club deserving that particular distinction. Frankly they haven’t got much going for them beyond, well, persistence, but they’re kind of all we’ve got. I remember being with Ferg the first time he encountered the literal as well as metaphorical tackiness of the Jings’s carpet. He just stood there, shifting from foot to foot a couple of times and went, ‘Hmm. Mulchy.’
‘Well, I suppose I did fancy Anjelica,’ I admit. ‘Not many men who didn’t, just, you know: on first principles. However, I suspect Grier talked it up a bit beyond that.’
‘I have it on good authority Grier talked it up a lot beyond that,’ Ellie says.
‘You ever mention this to Grier?’
‘Never saw the point.’
I wonder whether I ought to mention the whole thing with the cameras and the photos of Jel and me, and the way my thoughts have been turning. But that might be too much. And anyway I could still be wrong.
We arrive at the lowest of the hotel’s terraces and lean on the stone wall – chest height here, a couple of metres tall on the far side – which separates the hotel grounds from the back nine of the Olness course. Beyond – over two thin fairways, a couple of access tracks and a lot of knobbly, knee-high rough – neither beach nor sea looks much closer.
‘You really not sure how you feel?’ I ask her. ‘About me, I mean,’ I add, and know the last bit was unnecessary the instant the words are uttered.
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘I’m really not sure.’ She studies me for a few moments. ‘I’m not even sure what you mean, Stewart. Saying you still have feelings. What does that mean? What are these feelings? I know people usually mean that they still like a person a lot, or love them a little, or a medium amount, even if they’re not what you’d call in love, or maybe they are, but, again, not that much.’ She raises her hands, lets them fall. ‘It’s all so…mealy-mouthed, isn’t it? It’s like a bargaining chip, like a first step in a negotiation: I’ll admit I might still like you a bit and we can take it from there if you want, and if not then I haven’t exposed my position too much and I won’t be too humiliated if you reject me because I only used the word “feelings” rather than “love”.’
