by Iain Banks
‘Frank. It’s for you.’
‘H’m?’ I said slowly, opening my eyes gummily, looking at the television, then getting up a little unsteadily. My father left the door open for me and retreated to his study. I went to the phone.
‘M’m? Hello?’
‘ ’allah-oh, zet Frenk?’ said a very English voice.
‘Yes, hello?’ I said, puzzled.
‘Heh-heh, Frankie boy!’ Eric shouted. ‘Well, here I am, in your thorax of the woods and still eating the old hot dogs! Ho ho! So how are ye, me young bucko? Stars going OK for you, are they? What sign are you, anyway? I forget.’
‘Canis.’
‘Woof! Really?’
‘Yeah. What sign are you?’ I asked, dutifully following one of Eric’s old routines.
‘Cancer!’ came the screamed reply.
‘Benign or malignant?’ I said tiredly.
‘Malignant!’ Eric screeched. ‘I’ve got crabs at the moment!’
I took my ear away from the plastic while Eric guffawed. ‘Listen, Eric —’ I began.
‘How’re ye doin’? How’s things? Howzithingin’? Are you well? Howzitgon? Andyerself? Wotchermait. Like where’s your head at this moment in time? Where are you comin’ from? Christ, Frank, do you know why Volvos whistle? Well, neither do I, but who cares? What did Trotsky say? “I need Stalin like I need a hole in the head.” Ha ha ha ha ha! Actually I don’t like these German cars; their headlights are too close together. Are ye well, Frankie?’
‘Eric—’
‘To bed, to sleep; perchance to masturbate. Ah, there’s the rub! Ho ho ho!’
‘Eric,’ I said, looking round and up the stairs to make sure my father was nowhere in evidence. ‘Will you shut up!
‘What?’ Eric said, in a small, hurt voice.
‘The dog,’ I hissed. ‘I saw that dog today. The one down by the new house. I was there. I saw it.’
‘What dog?’ Eric said, sounding perplexed. I could hear him sigh heavily, and something clattered in the background.
‘Don’t try to mess me around, Eric; I saw it. I want you to stop, understand? No more dogs. Can you hear me? Do you get it? Well?’
‘What? What dogs?’
‘You heard. You’re too close. No more dogs. Leave them alone. And no kids, either. No worms. Just forget about it. Come and see us if you want to – that’d be nice – but no worms, no burning dogs. I’m serious, Eric. You’d better believe it.’
‘Believe what? What are you talking about?’ he said in a plaintive voice.
‘You heard,’ I said, and put the phone down. I stood by the telephone, looking upstairs. In a few seconds it rang again. I picked it up, heard pips go, and replaced it on the cradle. I stayed there for a few more minutes, but nothing else happened.
As I started to go back to the lounge my father came along from the study, wiping his hands on a cloth, followed by odd smells, his eyes wide.
‘Who was that?’
‘Just Jamie,’ I said, ‘putting on a funny voice.’
‘Hnnh,’ he said, apparently relieved, and went back.
• • •
Apart from his curry repeating on him my father was very quiet. When the evening started to cool I went out, just once round the island. Clouds were coming in off the sea, closing the sky like a door and trapping the day’s heat over the island. Thunder rumbled on the other side of the hills, without light. I slept fitfully, lying sweating and tossing and turning on my bed, until a bloodshot dawn rose over the sands of the island.
11: The Prodigal
I WOKE from my last bout of restless sleep with the duvet on the floor beside the bed. Nevertheless, I was sweating. I got up, had a shower, shaved carefully, and climbed into the loft before the heat up there got too severe.
In the loft it was very stuffy. I opened the skylights and stuck my head out, surveying the land behind and the sea in front with my binoculars. It was still overcast; the light seemed tired and the breeze tasted stale. I tinkered with the Factory a bit, feeding the ants and the spider and the Venus, checking wires, dusting the glass over the face, testing batteries and oiling doors and other mechanisms, all more to reassure myself than anything else. I dusted the altar as well as arranged everything on it carefully, using a ruler to make sure all the little jars and other pieces were arranged perfectly symmetrically on it.
I was sweating again by the time I came down, but couldn’t be bothered having another shower. My father was up, and made breakfast while I watched some Saturday-morning television. We ate in silence. I took a tour round the island in the morning, going to the Bunker and getting the Head Bag so I could do any necessary repair work to the Poles as I made my way round.
It took me longer than usual to complete the circuit because I kept stopping and going to the top of the nearest tall dune to look out over the approaches. I never did see anything. The heads on the Sacrifice Poles were in fairly good repair. I had to replace a couple of mice heads, but that was about all. The other heads and the streamers were intact. I found a dead gull lying on the mainland face of a dune, opposite the island’s centre. I took the head and buried the rest near a Pole. I put the head, which was starting to smell, in a plastic bag and stuffed it in the Head Bag with the dried ones.
I heard then saw the birds go up as somebody came along the path, but I knew it was only Mrs Clamp. I climbed a dune to watch, and saw her pedalling over the bridge with her ancient delivery-bike. I took another look over the pastureland and dunes beyond, once she had disappeared round the dune before the house, but there was nothing, just sheep and gulls. Smoke came from the dump, and I could just hear the steady grumble of an old diesel on the railway line. The sky stayed overcast but bright, and the wind sticky and uncertain. Out to sea I could make out golden slivers near the horizon where the water glittered under breaks in the cloud, but they were far, far out.
I completed my round of the Sacrifice Poles, then spent half an hour near the old winch indulging in a bit of target practice. I set up a few cans on the rusty iron of the drum housing, went back thirty metres and brought them all down with my catapult, using only three extra steelies for the six cans. I set them up again once I had recovered all but one of the big ball-bearings, went back to the same position and threw pebbles at the cans, this time taking fourteen shots before all the cans were down. I ended up throwing the knife at a tree by the old sheep-pen a few times and was pleased to find I was judging the number of tumbles well, the blade whacking into the much-cut bark straight each time.
• • •
Back in the house I washed, changed my shirt and then appeared in the kitchen in time for Mrs Clamp serving up the first course, which for some reason was piping-hot broth. I waved a slice of soft, smelly white bread over it while Mrs Clamp bent to the bowl and slurped noisily and my father crumbled wholemeal bread, which appeared to have wood shavings in it, over his plate.
‘And how are you, Mrs Clamp?’ I asked pleasantly.
‘Oh, I’m all right,’ Mrs Clamp said, drawing her brows together like a snagged end of wool being unravelled from a sock. She completed the frown and directed it at the dripping spoon just under her chin, telling it: ‘Oh, yes, I’m all right.’
‘Isn’t it hot?’ I said, and hummed. I went on flapping the bread over my soup while my father looked at me darkly.
‘It’s summer,’ Mrs Clamp explained.
‘Oh, yes,’ I said. ‘I’d forgotten.’
‘Frank,’ my father said rather unclearly, his mouth full of vegetables and wood shavings, ‘I don’t suppose you recall the capacity of these spoons, do you?’
‘A quarter-gill?’ I suggested innocently. He glowered and sipped some more soup. I kept on flapping, stopping only to disturb the brown skin that was forming over the surface of my broth. Mrs Clamp sipped again.
‘And how are things in the town, Mrs Clamp?’ I asked.
‘Very well, as far as I know,’ Mrs Clamp informed her soup. I nodded. My father was blowing at his
spoon. ‘The Mackies’ dog has gone missing, or so I was told,’ Mrs Clamp added. I raised my brows slightly and smiled in a concerned way. My father stopped and stared, and the noise of his soup dribbling off his spoon – the end of which had started to drop slightly just after Mrs Clamp’s sentence – echoed round the room like piss going into a toilet bowl.
‘Really?’ I said, keeping on flapping. ‘What a shame. Just as well my brother’s not around or he’d be getting the blame of it.’ I smiled, glanced at my father, then back at Mrs Clamp, who was watching me with narrowed eyes through the rising steam from her soup. Dough fatigue set into the piece of bread I was using to fan the soup, and it fell apart. I caught the falling end smartly with my free hand and returned it to my side plate, raising my spoon and taking a tentative sip from the surface of the broth.
‘H’m,’ Mrs Clamp said.
‘Mrs Clamp couldn’t get your beefburgers today,’ my father said, clearing his throat on the first syllable of ‘couldn’t’, ‘so she got you mince instead.’
‘Unions!’ Mrs Clamp muttered darkly, spitting into her soup. I put one elbow on the table, rested my cheek on a fist and looked puzzledly at her. To no avail. She didn’t look up, and eventually I shrugged to myself and carried on sipping. My father had put his spoon down, wiping his brow with one sleeve and using a fingernail in an attempt to remove a piece of what I assumed to be wood shaving from between two upper teeth.
‘There was a wee fire down by the new house yesterday, Mrs Clamp; I put it out, you know. I was down there and I saw it and I put it out,’ I said.
‘Don’t boast, boy,’ my father said. Mrs Clamp held her tongue.
‘Well, I did,’ I smiled.
‘I’m sure Mrs Clamp isn’t interested.’
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that,’ Mrs Clamp said, nodding her head in slightly confusing emphasis.
‘There, you see?’ I said, humming as I looked at my father and nodded towards Mrs Clamp, who slurped noisily.
I kept quiet through the main course, which was a stew, and only noted during the rhubarb and custard that it had a novel addition to the medley of flavours, when in fact the milk it had been made from had obviously been most profoundly off. I smiled, my father growled and Mrs Clamp slurped her custard and spat her stumps of rhubarb out on to her napkin. To be fair, it was a little undercooked.
• • •
Dinner cheered me up immensely and, although the afternoon was hotter than the morning, I felt more energetic. There were no slits of distant brightness out over the sea, and there was a thickness about the light coming through the clouds that went with the charge in the air and the slack wind. I went out, going once round the island at a brisk jog; I watched Mrs Clamp depart for the town, then I walked out in the same direction to sit on top of a tall dune a few hundred metres into the mainland and sweep the sweltering land with my binoculars.
Sweat rolled off me as soon as I stopped moving, and I could feel a slight ache start in my head. I had taken a little water with me, so I drank it, then refilled the can from the nearest stream. My father was doubtless right that sheep shat in the streams, but I was sure I had long since grown immune to anything I could catch from the local burns, having drunk from them for years while I had been damming them. I drank more water than I really felt like and returned to the top of the dune. In the distance the sheep were still, lying on the grass. Even the gulls were absent, and only the flies were still active. The smoke from the dump still drifted, and another line of hazy blue rose from the plantations in the hills, coming up from the edge of a clearing where they were harvesting the trees for the pulp mill farther up the shore of the firth. I strained to hear the sound of the saws, but couldn’t.
I was scanning the binoculars over that view to the south when I saw my father. I went over him, then jerked back. He disappeared, then reappeared. He was on the path, heading for the town. I was looking over to where the Jump was, and saw him climb the side of the dune I liked to power the bike down; I had first caught sight of him as he had crested the Jump itself. As I watched, he seemed to stumble on the path just before the summit of the hill, but recovered and kept going. His cap vanished over the far side of the dune. I thought he looked unsteady, as though he was drunk.
I put the glasses down and rubbed my slightly scratchy chin. This was unusual, too. He hadn’t said anything about going into the town. I wondered what he was up to.
I ran down the dune, leaped the stream and went back to the house at a fast cruise. I could smell whisky when I went through the back door. I thought back to how long ago we had eaten and Mrs Clamp had left. About an hour, an hour and a half. I went into the kitchen, where the smell of whisky was stronger, and there on the table lay an empty half-bottle of malt, one glass on its side nearby. I looked in the sink for another glass, but there were only dirty dishes lying in it. I frowned.
It was unlike my father to leave things unwashed. I picked up the whisky-bottle and looked for a black biro mark on the label, but there was nothing. That might mean it had been a fresh bottle. I shook my head to myself, wiped my forehead with a dishcloth. I took off my pocketed waistcoat and laid it over a chair.
I went out into the hall. As soon as I looked upstairs I saw that the phone was off the hook, lying by the side of the set. I went up to it quickly, picked it up. It was making an odd noise. I replaced it on the cradle, waited a few seconds, picked it up again and got the usual dialling tone. I threw it down and sprinted upstairs to the study, twisting the handle and throwing my weight against it. It was solid.
‘Shit!’ I said. I could guess what had happened and I had hoped my father might have left the study unlocked. Eric must have called. Dad gets the call, is shocked, gets drunk. Probably heading for the town to get more drink. Gone to the off-licence, or – I glanced at my watch – was this the weekend the Rob Roy’s all-day licence started? I shook my head; it didn’t matter. Eric must have called. My father was drunk. He was probably going to town to get more drunk, or to see Diggs. Or maybe Eric had arranged a rendezvous. No, that wasn’t likely; surely he would contact me first.
I ran upstairs, went up into the close heat of the loft, opened the land-side skylight again and surveyed the approaches through the glasses. I came back down, locked the house and went back out, jogging to the bridge and up the path, making detours for all the tall dunes once more. Everything looked normal. I stopped at the place I had last seen my father, just on the crest of the hill leading down to the Jump. I scratched my crotch in exasperation, wondering what was the best thing to do. I didn’t feel right about leaving the island, but I had a suspicion that it was in or near the town that things might start happening. I thought of calling Jamie up, but he probably wasn’t in the best condition to go traipsing round Porteneil looking for Father or keeping his nostrils open for the smell of burning dog.
I sat down on the path and tried to think. What would Eric’s next move be? He might wait for night to approach (I was sure he would approach; he wouldn’t come all this way just to turn away at the last moment, would he?), or he might have risked enough already in telephoning and consider he had little left to lose by heading for the house right away. But of course he might as well have done that yesterday, so what was keeping him? He was planning something. Or maybe I had been too abrupt with him on the phone. Why had I hung up on him? Idiot! Perhaps he was going to give himself up, or turn tail! All because I had rejected him, his own brother!
I shook my head angrily and stood up. None of this was getting me anywhere. I had to assume that Eric was going to get in touch. That meant that I had to go back to the house, where either he would phone me or he would arrive sooner or later. Besides, it was the centre of my power and strength, and also the place I had the most need to protect. Thus resolved, heart lightened now that I had a definite plan – even if it was more a plan of inaction than anything else – I turned for the house and jogged back.
• • •
The house had grown still more stuffy w
hile I had been away. I plonked myself down in a chair in the kitchen, then got up to wash the glass and dispose of the whisky-bottle. I had a long drink of orange juice, then filled a pitcher full of juice and ice, took a couple of apples, half a loaf of bread and some cheese and transported the lot up into the attic. I got the chair which normally sits in the Factory and propped it up on a platform of ancient encyclopedias, swung the skylight facing the mainland right back, and made a cushion from some old, faded curtains. I settled into my little throne and started watching through the binoculars. After a while I fished out the old bakelite-and-valves radio from the back of a box of toys and plugged it into the second light fixture with an adaptor. I turned on Radio Three, which was playing a Wagner opera; just the thing to put me in the mood, I thought. I went back to the skylight.
Holes had broken in the cloud-cover in a few places; they moved slowly, putting patches of land into a brassy, glaring sunlight. Sometimes the light shone on the house; I watched the shadow of my shed move slowly round as the late afternoon became early evening and the sun moved round above the frayed clouds. A slow pattern of reflecting windows glinted from the new housing estate in the trees, slightly above the old part of the town. Gradually one set of windows stopped reflecting, gradually others took their place, all punctuated by occasional stabs as windows were shut or opened, or cars moved in the council streets. I drank some of the juice, held ice cubes in my mouth, while the hot breath of the house wafted out around me. I kept the binoculars on their steady sweepings, scanning as far to the north and south as I could without falling out of the skylight. The opera ended, was replaced by some awful modern music for what sounded like Heretic-on-a-rack and Burning Dog, which I let play because it was stopping me from getting sleepy.
