by Iain Banks
Sitting there, mildly bored, listening to my ma and the other woman talk, I thought again about Jean Webb, and experienced a strange sense of loss, regret. Married; a mother. I'd have liked to have seen her again. But it had been a long time ago, and... I wasn't sure what it was; I felt a sense of something like incompleteness when I thought about her. It was as though she was somebody I should have known fully, perfectly, and then parted from, older and wiser, still good friends... instead, somehow, we had never got that far. I'd messed it up as usual, clumsy to the very core of my being. Would Gerald mind me looking them up? Did he think I was a first love, know I'd been a sort-of first lover? And was I jealous of him because of the child ?
Ah... better not to. Leave it. Leave them alone. As long as she was happy... I hoped she was happy.
Steamy Glasgow coffee shop on a rainy October weekday, wedged in with shopping bags; glare-white and azure view from a village on a hilltop, across the Cyclades in late spring.
You pays your money and toddles off home in both places.
I had a shower when I got back, then lay naked on a lounger on the terrace, drying in the sun and waiting for the drone of the seaplane's engine when it returned. I was reading Sense and Sensibility and thinking about mixing myself something long and cool and alcoholic, when Christine appeared out of the lounge.
'Oh,' she said.
I jumped a little, then put the opened book down across my groin.
'Sorry, I thought...' Or something very similar was what we both started to say.
'I didn't hear you come back' I said. Christine hesitated at the door, looking a little bleary-eyed, dishevelled, and confused and amused as well. She gave what might have been a shrug, then sat down on a hanging basket-chair, throwing me the towel that had been on its seat.
'Back from where?' she said, yawning and rubbing her eyes. 'I haven't been anywhere.'
'Didn't you go to Piraeus? I found a note.' I picked the towel off my legs and repositioned it modestly. 'About going for milk; Inez must have decided she needed cows' milk for something... I suppose just she and Davey must have gone. You been asleep?'
'Oh, it shows?' Christine smiled, and stretched, arching her back and neck and putting her arms out in front and above her. She was wearing a long white T -shirt. It rode up over her thighs; I found myself looking furtively at her blonde pubic hair. She pulled the T-shirt down, and I saw her looking at me. She cleared her throat while I blushed. 'God,' she said, laughing. 'We're all at it. Want a drink?' She got up.
I nodded. 'Anything. Beer.'
'Two beers,' Christine said, disappearing.
Oh, well, I thought, what with all this topless sunbathing and all, I guess I've seen more or less every bit of our Christine. I wondered what Jane Austen would have made of it all.
Christine came back, bikini bottom on too now, and we drank our beers, and waited for the seaplane, and gazed out into the hazy blue.
She closed her eyes at one point, and put her head back on the lounger. I studied her face, thinking she looked older than my usual mental image of her. There were little lines at the corners of her eyes, and between her dark eyebrows.
She opened her eyes, looking at me.
'Can't seem to stay awake,' she said, though she didn't sound drowsy.
'I have that effect on most people,' I said grinning.
'No, I'm just tired. Very, very tired.' She stared at her empty beer bottle and turned it this way and that in her hand.
'It was a tough tour,' I said. She just nodded her head after a while, then brought the bottle up to her lips and blew across the hole, producing a low, faltering note.
The plane didn't come back that afternoon. We drank a few more beers, played some tapes we'd brought with us, had a couple of games of cards.
The evening came on, and it started to get dark. If the plane didn't come in the next half hour or so, it wouldn't come at all; even Davey had drawn the line at night landings on the water. We waited, while the sun's glow faded and Venus, and then the stars, slowly brightened... but; no plane.
'Think they've flown back to Britain for pasteurised?' I said. Christine had an angora jumper on now, though her long brown legs were still bare. She shook her head slowly.
'Probably a break-down.'
'We should have had a radio we could call them up on,' I said.
'Hmm,' Christine said. She got up. 'Let's eat. Want to walk to that little place we were in the first night you were here? Along the coast? You know; Thingy-os or whatever. It's a bit of a walk, but...'
Stuffed peppers, red mullet; bitter coffee and incredibly sticky sweets. The gods were smiling on us that night; not a single noisy German youth in earshot. The restaurant had champagne, too. We ate our fill, and wandered back along the shore path and across the beaches, clutching a last bottle of champagne and talking and belching.
Christine yawned, stood on the beach and looked up at the clear sky. I stopped too. She took a slow drink from the bottle, then handed it to me. 'What's that?' she said, pointing.
'What's what?' I looked.
'That; there; beside those stars. Across from the moon and down a bit. Moving. Is that a plane? A UFO? What is it?'
I saw what she meant eventually, after she'd got me to kneel down and she'd crouched behind me, arm over my shoulder, so I could follow the line of her arm. 'Oh, that,' I said. 'It'll be a satellite.'
'Really? I didn't know you could see them. Are you kidding me on?'
'No; it's a satellite.'
'Hmm.' Christine shook her head. 'Never knew that...' She took the bottle back, yawned and drank. 'So fucking tired, Weird.'
'Come on,' I said, holding out my hand. 'We'll get you back to your bed.'
She shook her head, sat down heavily on the sand. She looked towards the quietly breaking waves. 'Do you know what we've been doing the past two weeks, Weird?' she said. I squatted beside her.
'Just relaxing?' I suggested.
Christine took a deep breath. 'Trying to get Davey off smack, finally, for good... at last... one last...' She looked round at me. 'Did you know he'd been taking it?'
'There's a lot of things I don't know,' I said; one of the stock, off-the-peg answers it helps to carry around with you if you're as naturally conversationally clumsy and awkward as me. In fact, I'd guessed Davey was on something, but I hadn't been sure. Like I still wasn't sure whether Christine knew about what had happened between Davey and Inez. Inez and Davey had both been vague on that point.
So it all came out then, sitting on that dark beach, on golden sand and before a blue sea, both of which had lost their colours till the dawn; all the hurt and tension and the fear poured out of Christine, and I sat there and just listened.
How he'd started, how he'd controlled it at first; the talk of only weak people really needing it but he was living on a high all the time anyway; H just intensified it, and how he got his greatest kicks out of playing on stage; nothing could match that, and how for the past few months, including during the tour, she'd been trying to get him to stop, and thought he had, then found he hadn't, and discovered things about herself and about him she hadn't known; that she felt responsible for him, that he could, nevertheless, infuriate her to the point of hate and rage; that he could use the drug to hurt her; taking it to spite her when she annoyed him; and encountering the user's duplicity and illogic; I've given it up; I've virtually given it up; I'll give it up tomorrow; hey look I went a day without any so I deserve some as a reward...
She'd talked and shouted and screamed, she'd hit him, threatened to break his fingers, shop him to the police, she'd searched all his clothes and possessions and thrown the stuff out when she found any; finally, she just hadn't let him out of her sight for the last couple of weeks of the tour (I had noticed they'd seemed very close in one way and very distant with each other in another way, towards the close of the tour), and the same for the first two weeks here, on Naxos.
And so she was tired, not just because Davey was one of those peop
le who didn't seem to need very much sleep, and she didn't dare go to sleep before him, but because of the tension, the concentration... And so, also, she'd needed to tell it all to somebody.
We sat there and drank most of the champagne, and watched another few satellites drift slowly overhead; and there were a couple of shooting stars too, thin bright silent lines that disappeared before you had a chance to look at them.
'Anyway... ' Christine said, 'I think he's over it.'
She looked at the brushing line of white where the waves hit the beach. 'I hope he's over it.'
I couldn't think of anything to say. I put my arm around her, patted her shoulder. 'Weird,' she said, closing one eye and looking at me from very close range, 'I'm going for a swim.'
'Oh?' I said, as she peeled off her jeans and jumper.
'Coming in?' she asked. She took off a T-shirt under the jumper, snagging it round her head for a moment and giving me a chance to ogle her breasts in the moonlight and think, Oh God, I'd love to screw you, Christine. 'Oh, fuck,' she grunted, finally hauling the T -shirt off. She stood in her bikini bottom, looking down at me. 'Well?'
'I don't have any Ys on,' I told her .
'Weird, I've already... oh, suit yourself.' She padded down the sand to the water. 'It's still quite warm,' she said. 'Come on in.'
I shook my head. She waded in a little further until the small waves were breaking around her knees, then stopped, turned round to me and stepped out of the bikini bottom. She threw it up the beach to me. 'Does that make you feel any better?' she said, then turned and ran and dived forward.
I stood up, watching the splashes of her easy-looking crawl draw slowly away. I stripped too, and laid both lots of clothes neatly on the beach.
My crawl is spectacular but inefficient; Christine swam rings round me. I had my feet tickled and my bum pinched, water splashed at me, and I lost the race back to shore.
We lay there, side by side on the sand and breathing hard. I lay looking up at the stars and the chip of moon, and shivered a little. I wanted to turn over and kiss Christine, but I knew I wouldn't. These things don't happen that way with me. Besides, I tried to tell myself; it would be too tidy, and too much like a deliberate revenge, to form the fourth side of this eternal square on another beach, before another line of surf, under the high-tech lights of passing spy satellites...
Forget about it.
I wondered where Davey and Inez were: in bed, in Athens, or an island between here and there? Or had they really given up their little affair, and were they chastely apart, separate rooms while the plane was repaired ?
Jesus, I thought, for all I know they're both at the bottom of the Aegean. But that didn't bear thinking about.
Christine gave a big, sort of whistling sigh at my side. I tipped my head a little, to see her staring up at the stars again. I let my gaze wander down her body, over nipples and belly and mons and thighs and knees, and I thought what a damn shame it was that it seemed so important that I be the woman's friend, and be thought trustworthy and kind and somebody she could talk to, when what I really wanted to do was throw myself on top of her and cover her in kisses and be covered in hers and pull her legs apart and have her pull me inside her and... oh, dear God; that didn't bear thinking about either.
I looked back up into the sky again. The stars in the north were gone; cloud must be moving in.
'You pointing out any particular star, Weird?' Christine asked lazily.
'What?' I said, mystified. My arms were both down at my sides; what was she talking about?
Christine showed me. Her hand was wet, warm/cold. She propped herself up on her other elbow and said, 'Well ... what are we going to do with you, Weird?'
'Do you' — I cleared my throat — 'want a suggestion?'
She brought her head down to mine, but as I reached up with my hands and opened my mouth, she kissed me briefly on the nose and pulled away again. I opened my eyes to see her holding the champagne bottle. She sloshed what was left of it around in the bottom of the bottle, stroking me gently with her other hand. 'You ever had a champagne head-job, Weird?'
'A champagne hedgehog?' I said, mishearing.
'Head job... I mean, blow job,' she said, laughing. I shook my head. She put the bottle to her lips and threw her head back. Her cheeks bulged as she put the empty bottle down, held up one finger and said, 'Mmm mm m-mmm mm.' Which I think was meant to be, 'Don't go away now.' Then she lowered her head.
'Ka-pow!' was my considered comment, I seem to recall.
Then we screwed on the beach, and a couple of times back at the villa.
A storm passed over late in the night, coming from the north: thunder crashed and lightning flashed. She moved half-waking, made a small whimpering noise, and I held her still salty body close to me as the storm which had kept Davey and Inez in Piraeus moved above us.
'You want to call the next album what?'
'I want to call it "We'll Build You A New One, Mrs McNulty",' I told Davey. I looked at him briefly, then quickly looked back to the racetrack; Balfour had almost lapped me. I tried speeding up, but came off at a bend I'd misjudged twice already; the little plastic Scalextric car flew off the black track and flopped into the pile of three cars underneath; two of mine and one of Davey's. I reached for another car and slotted it into the track as Davey cackled (another half-lap gained).
'Mad,' Balfour told me, as his car swept past where we sat. 'You're mad. That is a crazy title. ARC'll never let us call an album that.'
I shrugged. 'I'll talk them round to it.' We were sitting in tall chairs which were perched on top of a large table at one end of what had been the mansion's dining room; it was a good fifty feet long, and Davey's model racing set filled most of it. He must have had about a hundred yards of track spaghettied throughout the room, and at least a dozen booster transformers connected to distant parts of the track, all controlled through the handsets via a small computer. The roadway swooped and zoomed amongst packing cases and stacks of ancient books and piles of old curtains and bedding.
Davey had positioned mirrors at various points throughout the room, so you could see places where the track disappeared from view, but it was tricky driving. When a car came off— which happened fairly often — you just pulled another one from a pile of boxes behind where you sat (on a very broad table) and slotted it into the system where the tracks passed directly in front of you.
The winner was the first person to notch up ten circuits on the automatic lap counter. I hadn't wanted to play — I knew Davey would win — but it was so damn impressive when you first walked into the room that it would have seemed churlish to decline the challenge. I loved it, actually; I kept rocking this way and that in the high-backed chairs we were sitting in, and nearly fell off the table several times.
'Ten,' Davey said, and let his car cruise to a stop in front of me, just beyond the lap counter. I was concentrating on the hill-climb section of the course, a good forty feet away in one corner of the room. Davey leaned forward in his seat to look at the lap counter .
'Yep,' he said. 'Ten.' He looked at me. 'You've got six.'
'Will you back me up with Tumber for that album title?' I asked him.
'No.'
'Aw, go on.' I got the car to the top of the sheet — and curtain-draped pile of packing cases and tea chests, despite a couple of places where I wagged the tail a bit, and started down the far side, slowing fractionally.
'No, it's a stupid title.'
'It's a great title. It'll intrigue people.'
'It's a stupid title and people'll just go "What?", and they'll forget it and they'll be too embarrassed to go into a record shop and ask for it.'
'Rubbish.'
'That's exactly what it is.' I took the car over a series of sinuous chicanes held up by strips of Meccano over an old iron and enamel bath full of water. I'd already lost two cars into the bath in hopelessly one-sided confrontations with Davey in the chicanes.
'We have to be adventurous. We need to keep
surprising people.'
'Not with a title like that.'
'Look, just back me up with Tumber. I've already spoken to Chris; she'll go along with you. Wes doesn't care and Mickey won't argue.' Davey packed some grass into a small pipe, and watched me bring the car over a succession of humpbacks it was all too easy to go into mid-air from. The trick seemed to be to let the car take off, but land and re-slot before the next bend. I took it slowly, determined to get this car back. 'Tell you what,' Davey said. My heart sank. I knew that tone. I should have said, Never mind, there and then, but I didn't. 'Let's race for it. If you win, I'll be right there. I promise. I'll be even more enthusiastic than you for ... Mrs McNaughty or whatever the fuck it is.'
'McNulty; the name's McNulty. Don't pretend you've forgotten it. And no; you'll win the race. You've been practising; this is my first time.'
'I'll give you a start. Four laps. That what you lost by this time, and you're improving already, so it'll be fair.' As though to confirm this, I brought my car in, bringing my lap total to seven. I stopped the car on the starting grid in front of us. Davey lit the pipe, and said between sucks, 'Four laps; that's fair.'
'Make it five.'
He handed me the pipe, shaking his head. 'Drive a hard bargain,' he gasped. 'Okay.'
I sucked the smoke in, scalding my throat. I didn't like the way Balfour had agreed so readily. 'What,' I said, then coughed, 'what if you win?'
Davey shrugged, positioned his car and mine exactly on the starting grid. 'You come for a ride in the plane.'
'What, now?' We'd had a couple of bottles of wine with the meal Davey had slung together (he had a sort of cook/butler/general gofer who usually lived in the house, but he'd given the guy the week off), and we'd drunk a few Glenmorangies and smoked a few pipes too.
I'd been trying to put off going for a flight until tomorrow, after being reminded of the way Davey drove. I hoped it would be foggy tomorrow, or it would rain torrentially, or there'd be some unseasonal snow (unlikely in Kent in August, but I was clutching at straws). I certainly wasn't going up after Davey had been drinking and smoking.
