Stonemouth

by Iain Banks

  ‘And it has to be good shit!’ I hear him yell after me as I walk off. ‘None of that fucking drain-cleaner shite that makes your nose bleed frothy blue, d’you hear? I’ll pay you later! Be a generous tip! I’m good for it! Ha ha ha ha ha!’

  Mike Mac’s place is less than ten minutes’ walk away, but it turns into a journey of nearly half an hour as Ellie and I escort Ferg there.

  ‘You’d be better off going home,’ I tell him as we approach the end of Olness Terrace and the turn that’ll take us – thankfully downhill – towards the MacAvetts’ house.

  ‘Don’t want to go home! I want to swim! And where’s my fucking coke?’

  ‘Don’t have any, Ferg.’

  ‘But I gave you the money!’

  ‘No you didn’t, Ferg.’

  ‘I gave him the money!’ Ferg says, turning to Ellie.

  She shakes her head. ‘I don’t believe you did, Ferg.’

  ‘What? Are you mad, woman? Who you going to believe? This proven liar who betrayed you five years ago and left you standing at the altar or as good as, or me, Ferg?’ Ferg tears his right arm out of my grip and thumps himself on the chest. I pull his arm back.

  Ellie glances over at me. ‘I’ll believe Stewart, Ferg.’

  ‘You’re mad!’ He looks at me. ‘She’s mad!’

  ‘Sure we can’t just take you home, Ferg?’ Ellie asks.

  ‘Certainly not! Are we there yet?’ We decide to ring Jel.

  ‘Is it okay if we bring Ferg?’ I ask her.

  ‘Is he sober?’ Jel sounds like she knows this is a purely rhetorical question.

  ‘I’m so glad you asked,’ I tell her. ‘He’s incredibly sober. Unbelievably sober.’ Ferg stumbles over a paving stone and I help support him. ‘Staggeringly sober.’

  ‘He’s filthy drunk, isn’t he?’

  ‘Filthy hardly covers it.’

  ‘Well, okay, but he’s your responsibility.’

  ‘I was afraid you’d say that, but all right.’

  Ferg’s practically asleep when we arrive. Jel greets us, all happy, smiling, pleased to see us. Well, pleased to see two-thirds of us. We leave Ferg snoring in the recovery position behind some potted palms on the floor of the old conservatory and join the party in the pool extension.

  Ellie tracks sinuously back and forth through the waters of the MacAvett pool, looking as effortless as a dolphin, as though the ripples and waves around her are what power her, not the result of her effort. She uses the crawl in pools, mostly; in the sea, in anything other than a flat calm, she prefers sidestroke. Whatever stroke she employs, El inhabits it like she invented it herself.

  Mrs Mac brings lots of tea and coffee and more food, in case we all haven’t gorged ourselves sufficiently up at the Mearnside. There are sandwiches on home-baked bread, home-made scones – plain, cheese and fruit – and home-made jams too. I try a little of everything. It’s all delicious.

  I’m sitting, about midway along the long side of the pool, on a lounger under the palms. Above, rolled-back blinds reveal the glass roof covering the whole extension.

  There are maybe twenty people here, all in their twenties, I’d guess, apart from one eighteen-year-old and Sue, who must be late forties at least and looks like she dyes her blonde hair, but is still trim. A few guys are drinking beers, a few women white wine or spritzers. I’m on my second pint of tap water, pacing myself earnestly and rehydrating. Mike Mac is in bed, having a snooze.

  I’ve checked on Ferg once so far. Hasn’t moved. Snoring like a pig. I’m feeling a little dozy myself here in the humid, sunny warmth of the pool area. I’ve been watching Phelpie through half-shut eyes, watching the way he watches Jel when she’s swimming or just walking around, sitting, talking. Does our Phelpie harbour certain feelings for the delightful Anjelica? I do believe he might. That’s sweet, I guess. Jel glances at Phelpie once or twice. Hard to tell if she’s appreciating this attention or bothered by it.

  I shake myself properly awake, sitting up as straight as the lounger will allow. Ellie is doing double lengths underwater now, hyperventilating at the shallow end of the pool and then slipping under the surface, kicking away from the wall and swimming breaststroke along the bottom. The pale, wave-filtered light warps her slim form into fluid abstract shapes that seem to run like coloured mercury along the tiles beneath, her skin seeming gradually to darken under the increasing weight of water at the deep end.

  Her roll and kick at the pool wall comes so easy and fast, it’s as though she reflects off the tiles rather than has to do anything so inelegant as physically connect and push. Her image trembles along the pool bottom again, growing paler as the water shallows, then she slows just before the wall and resurfaces gently, breathing barely any harder. She smoothes her hair back over her forehead. She sniffs hard, turns and looks round, sees me, smiles.

  She pulls a few more deep, deep breaths – breaths so full you can see her chest expand and her body rise up within the waves with the extra buoyancy – then she exhales, like a long, extended sigh and slips under the water again.

  Jel comes and sits down on the lounger next to me, holding a glass of something pale and bubbly. From the shape, probably a spritzer. ‘How you doing?’ she asks, with a glance at the pool.

  ‘Oh, fine,’ I tell her. ‘I’m swimming through my thoughts here.’ She’s in loose jeans and a half-open blouse over her bikini top, her hair still wet-dark from an earlier plunge. I was offered a loan of trunks but declined.

  ‘And how are you and Ellie?’ she asks.

  I shake my head. ‘Not entirely sure.’

  Jel is silent for a few seconds. ‘You can see the way you look at her,’ she says quietly, as though talking to her glass, before looking back up into my eyes.

  ‘Oh yeah?’

  Jel’s smiling a small smile. She taps my forearm twice as she rises. ‘Best of luck.’

  She goes off to talk to Phelpie and a couple of the others. I look after her for a moment, then turn back to watch Ellie.

  She’s back under the water again, flowing along just above the glistening surface of the tiles on the pool bottom like something more liquid than the water itself.

  18

  A bunch of us head down to the beach, over the red sandstone wall at the bottom of the MacAvetts’ garden. There are a couple of steps on the garden side and a head-height, probably-about-time-it-was-replaced steel ladder down onto the sand on the other. The wall itself is smooth and solid on the garden side, pitted and half hollow on the face exposed to the spray and to a century of blown, scouring sand, leaving the pale mortar in skinny, granular ridges forming squared-off cells surrounding the striated scoops in the softer stone.

  There’s Ellie and me, Phelpie, an awakened, groggy and still slightly grumpy Ferg, and Jel and Ryan. Ryan showed up from his own place in town ten minutes ago, maybe alerted to El’s presence in the family home by somebody because he looked sort of desperate and keen when he arrived, and not properly surprised when he saw Ellie.

  She just smiled when she saw him, said hi. He’s tagging along now, keeping close to Jel and trying not to look at Ellie too much. Ellie’s in her swimsuit, skirted with one towel and holding another across her shoulders. Apparently the dip in the pool was all very well but it just gave her a taste for some sea swimming. The North Sea on an October evening with a stiff breeze blowing, crashing rollers and sand everywhere. It’s the very start of October, and the weather is still mild – warm if you were being generous – but still.

  That’s my girl. Well, that was my girl. Let’s not get carried away here.

  The two lanky, loping shapes of the MacAvett wolfhounds – apparently they’re called Trinny and Tobago – are already well into the distance, chasing each other through shallows and barking at the waves.

  ‘With you shortly,’ I tell Ellie, then drop back from the rest as they walk along. When I’m far enough back I take out my phone and call Grier. It sounds like the phone’s about to ring out and I’m thinking, Well, I’m carr
ying El’s jacket, and her phone’s in there; I could cheat and call Grier on that and stand a better chance of her answering, but it would be a mean trick. Then she picks up.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Grier? It’s Stewart.’

  ‘Yeah? What?’

  ‘You got a moment?’

  I hear her sigh. ‘Been wanting a moment all day, haven’t you?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘Okay. But tell me now: am I going to enjoy this?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘Better keep it short then. Say your piece, Stu.’

  ‘Did you set it all up?’

  ‘Set what all up?’

  ‘Five years ago? The Mearnside? The kids-’n’-cameras idea. Telling Jel I was her biggest fan. Taking a camera off one of the children and making sure you got the right shot of me and Jel.’

  ‘Are you serious?’

  ‘Just asking.’

  ‘Why the fuck would I do all that?’

  ‘I don’t know. Sheer devilment? Jealousy, maybe.’

  ‘Jealousy? Seriously; are you serious?’

  ‘Well, there was that time in London when you came to stay at my place. You seemed, kind of…interested, then? In me? In us fucking?’

  ‘Maybe you remember it different from me.’

  ‘Maybe. But not that different.’

  ‘You do flatter yourself sometimes, don’t you, Stu?’

  ‘So you didn’t really want to? I completely misunderstood you sliding a hand into my pants and lip-chewing my ear?’

  ‘Oh, there might have been a sort of transferred urge. That other guy, Brad, he turned out to be useless, remember? And maybe there was sort of an experimental thing, too? To see what Ellie had been getting all those years, sort of level-up with her? Just cos the opportunity had presented itself; not something I’d planned for or anything? And, frankly, if this is what you’re really like, then I’m really glad now it never happened. You did notice I didn’t exactly stalk you after that? Honestly, Stu, you’re not that…addictive. What makes you think I’m into older men anyway?’

  ‘Okay. Forget the motivations. Just tell me: is it true? Did you set up the thing with the cameras?’

  ‘No. And don’t be ridiculous.’

  ‘That your final answer?’

  ‘Yes. You’re fantasising.’

  ‘I don’t think I am.’

  ‘Well, I don’t believe I care what you think any more, Stewart. So, we done here? That your moment over? I’m sure I have better things to do.’

  ‘Sorry to have wasted your time.’

  ‘Yeah, sure you are.’ There’s a pause. ‘But, actually, no. No. If I can join in on this open-mike fantasy session you’ve got going here, why not think about it being about me trying to stop Ellie being happy, because I just didn’t like her? Didn’t like her easy way with everything, the way everybody said she was the pretty one, the way she could just do what she wanted and have who she wanted and never, ever realise how lucky she was, how privileged, how spoiled? Maybe it was all about teaching her a lesson. Maybe it had nothing to do with you at all, Stewart. Maybe you were just, like, collateral damage? Maybe you were just used. Maybe you were just a tool.’

  I hear her take a breath, waiting for me to answer, but I keep quiet.

  ‘Yes? No? Plausible to you? Or not ego-massaging enough? Or it could have been Ellie, you know? Maybe she just got tired of you and wanted a plausible way out where she’d look like the victim? Maybe Jel was just doing her a favour, or El had something over her. No? That not acceptable either? Okay, here’s another thought. Maybe it wasn’t my idea in the first place; maybe I only helped a little, did what I was asked to do and was proud to be part of the family team for once, just following orders? Maybe it was Don. Maybe he set you up because he didn’t trust you, because he didn’t want somebody like you marrying into the family, somebody he didn’t understand who wanted to be a fucking artist and talked all this weird hippie bullshit about worshipping truth or whatever the fuck? Maybe you just failed the audition, Stu, and this was Don’s way of getting you out of the picture, even if it broke Ellie’s heart. Maybe all that, Stu. Maybe you should think of all that, if we’re entertaining all the possibilities, even the crazy ones. Getting caught with your pants down in a toilet stall by a little kid too fucking inglorious for you? Has to be a conspiracy, yeah? Fucking grow up, Stu.’

  The phone goes dead. Then, a few seconds later, the screen lights up again, and it’s Grier’s number.

  I put the phone to my ear and draw in a breath but she gets there first. ‘And don’t call me back!’

  Dead again. Properly dead, too; no battery left. Oh well.

  There’s a bit on the beach that’s just right for a swim, Ellie says, casting a knowing eye over the way the breakers are falling across low sandbanks and shallow channels, fifty metres out. To me, it looks just the same as all the other bits of beach and sea.

  ‘This where you usually swim?’ I ask her.

  ‘There’s no usually,’ she tells me. ‘Just wherever the waves are right. Changes every tide with how the sand lies. Today, here’s good.’

  We take her word for it and hunker down on the dry sand with some blankets and towels and two cooler boxes full of soft drinks, wine and beer.

  We’re about thirty or forty metres down the beach, more or less level with the broad, shallow slipway that marks the end of the Promenade; Olness golf course starts a little further on. Yarlscliff and Stoun Point are visible to the south through the slight remaining haze. Vatton forest, an hour’s brisk walk away in the opposite direction, remains invisible in the greyness; it would be only a dark line smudged across the northern horizon even on a clear day. The roll of cloud offshore seems to have dissipated into the pervading mistiness still covering beach and town.

  Ellie drops the towels, looks at us all sitting on the blankets. ‘Really? Nobody else coming in?’

  The onshore breeze might have slackened a little, but it still fills the air with the sound of the surf breaking all along the great multikilometre reach of this wide east coast, making everything that everybody says seem somehow distant, submerged within the vast white-noise shush of the sea.

  ‘Think you’re on your own,’ I tell her. I pick up the towels, drape them over the arm already carrying her jacket.

  ‘Looks a bit cold,’ Jel says. She appears tiny in a big green waxed jacket she picked up in the back porch; one of her dad’s.

  Ryan looks like he’d happily volunteer to go in with Ellie, skinny-dipping if necessary, but can’t bring himself to say it.

  ‘We’ll just watch you,’ Phelpie says, with what might be a leer. He pulls the tab on a can of Irn Bru.

  ‘Yes. Do try not to drown,’ Ferg tells her, rummaging through one of the cool boxes, probably looking for the drink with the highest ABV.

  Ellie is putting on a Day-Glo-yellow bathing cap, tucking her hair up into it. ‘I’ll try,’ she says.

  ‘I can life-save,’ Ryan blurts, holding up one hand, then immediately looking like he’s regretting it. Ellie just smiles tightly at him. He looks round at the rest of us. ‘El taught me,’ he says, voice dropping away.

  ‘Right, be good,’ El says, addressing all of us, and – with a last smile to me – turns to the sea.

  She walks, then jogs away across the sands: poised, elegant, gazelle-graceful, the whites of her soles pale flashes against the sand and the honey tone of her calves and thighs. She splashes into the first shallow pools, pads across a sandbank, negotiates a deeper pool – bending to scoop and splash the water over her – then crosses another long hummock of sand into the line of breaking surf, raising splashes and continuing to rub water over her upper arms and shoulders as she keeps on striding forward, wading in to mid-thigh before suddenly arcing forward in a neat dive, disappearing.

  I find myself letting out a breath. Around me, people are talking away, and have been for the past half-minute or so.

  I hadn’t noticed.

&nbs
p; Jel just grins and shakes her head at me. Ryan is still staring at the waves.

  I sit down with everybody else, folding the towels and El’s jacket into a neat pile.

  Ferg is sitting with a cigarette in his mouth, patting the side pockets of his jacket. ‘Where’s my—’

  ‘Try the breast pocket,’ I suggest.

  ‘Ah.’

  I saunter over to Phelpie, sit by him for a bit. ‘How you doing, Phelpie? How’s life anyway?’

  Phelpie grins at me, rotates his shoulders inside his tee and fleece, and nods. ‘Oh, fine.’ He glances – briefly, but definitely – at Jel as he answers. That was kind of all I wanted to know. ‘Funny old day, eh?’

  I nod. ‘Funerals are, sometimes, I suppose.’

  ‘Heard there might have been a wee contretemps between you and Frase earlier, in the Mearnside. That right, aye?’

  I waggle a hand. ‘Minor misunderstanding. Only just merited the term confrontation.’

  ‘Still, best be careful with Frase, eh?’ Phelpie sounds sincere and his big, open-looking face regards me with an expression of genuine concern.

  ‘Have been,’ I tell him. ‘Will be.’

  He drinks from his can. ‘And Murdo,’ he says, thoughtfully. ‘And Norrie. And Mr M, too, of course.’

  ‘Of course.’

  He glances at me, smiles. ‘Not to mention those two lassies.’

  I smile back. ‘Not to mention the lassies.’

  The two wolfhounds reappear suddenly, coming tearing past us in great, long, lolloping strides, pink tongues flopping from the sides of their mouths, their breath loud and rasping as they turn, filling the air in front of us with arcs of sand. They pile off towards a small flock of seagulls on a sandbar across a shallow inlet. The dogs are still twenty metres away when the birds rise as one, wheeling through the air as the wolfhounds run and bounce beneath, barking distantly.

  ‘Ferg, you’re upwind again,’ Jel says, waving a hand in front of her face.

  ‘Sorry,’ Ferg says, sighing.

  He’s been pacing restlessly around, hands stuffed into jacket pockets, shoulders hunched, fag stuck into the corner of his mouth, occasionally wandering into a position where his smoke wafts over us. Jel complains each time. He spits the butt out and pushes it into the sand with his shoe, burying it.