by Iain Banks
Then Andrea Cramond appears. She looks odd from this raised vantage point, but it's her all right. She wears a white trouser suit of raw silk, red high heels, red silk blouse. She puts the jacket - didn't I buy that for her in Jenner's last year? - down at the foot of the bed, then she goes to the man, and bends to kiss him, on the forehead, then lightly on the lips; her hand stays a little while, stroking hair back from his brow. She sits in a chair on one side of the bed, legs crossed at the knee, elbow on thigh, chin in hand. She stares at the man. I stare at her.
A few more lines on that calm but troubled face, just starting; maybe. Those little crinkles under her eyes are still there, but there are slight shadows underneath them now. Her hair is longer than I recall. I cannot see her eyes properly, but those cheekbones, that elegant nose, the wide dark eyebrows, the strong jaw and soft mouth ... those I can see.
She leans forward and takes his hand, still gazing at him. Why is she here? Why isn't she in Paris?
Scuse me darlin'; you come her oftin?
(Is this now? Is this in the past?)
After a little while, still holding his hand and staring at his white, expressionless face, she slowly lowers her head to the white, turned-over sheet near the man's hand, and buries her face in its starched whiteness. Her shoulders shake; once, twice.
The screen in here goes dark, and then the lights go off. The lights in the room next door with the bed in it stay on.
My subconscious, I suspect, is trying to tell me something. Subtlety never was its strong suit. I sigh, put my hands on the arms of the leather chair, and slowly rise.
I dump my clothes on the floor by the bed. There is a short, rear-fastening cotton night-gown laid out on the pillow. I put it on, climb into bed, fall asleep.
Coda
Fool! Idiot! What the hell do you think you're doing? You were happy there! Think of the control, the fun, the possibilities! And what are you going back to? Probably chucked out of the partnership, certain to be tried for drunk driving (no more flash cars for you for a while, lad), getting older and less happy all the time; losing her to another illness, another bedside. You always did what she wanted; she used you, not the other way round; it was role-reversal all right, and you got screwed. She turned you down don't forget; she rejected you; she went on rejecting you and if you show signs of recovery she'll be off again. Don't do it, you idiot!
What else can I do? For one thing they might just turn me off; no doubt my brain shows signs of life, so they know I'm not brain-dead, but if I just lie here showing no other signs of life they might decide to take the drips away, stop the water and liquid foods and let me die.
So, for self-preservation; isn't that meant to be the most important principle?
Anyway, you can't leave her like that. You can't do that to the woman. She doesn't deserve it; nobody does. You don't belong to her and she doesn't belong to you, but you're both part of each other; if she got up and left now and walked away and you never saw each other again for the rest of your lives, and you lived an ordinary waking life for another fifty years, even so on your deathbed you would still know she was part of you.
You have left your marks on each other, you have helped to shape one another; you have each given the other an accent to their life which they will never quite lose; no matter.
You have a greater call on her than the other one only while you are so much closer to death. If you recover, she may well go back to him. Well, tough. You had decided you didn't grudge him that, or was that just the drink talking?
No, it -
Louder.
I said no it wasn't the drink -
Still can't hear you, man. Speak up.
OK! I meant it! I meant it!
Damn it I did, too. And another thing: she still thinks things happen in threes. There was her father, dying in the car; then Gustave, under sentence, slowly deteriorating ... then me. Another car another car crash; another man she loved. Oh, I don't doubt now that Gustave and I are very similar, and that we both might like each other, and I'm sure he would have got on with the advocate just as I did, and for the same reason ... but if I can stop the similarities there, by God I will. I will not be the third man! (Pale fingers rise from the screen's black grating, trembling in the night wind like white tubers ... damn thing's sticked again; the monochrome image peels and bursts, white light behind. Too late again, the sniper first sees then aims then fires and the third -)
No, this little sequence ends at two, if I've got anything to do with it. (And another, slightly sneaky, thought occurs, now that I've realised how alike Gustave and I might be: I know what I'd tell Andrea if I was the one slowly deteriorating and she wanted to martyr herself looking after me ... )
I'll go to that other city; I always wanted to, really. I want to meet this man. Damn it I wanna do things! I want to travel the Trans-Siberian, go to India, stand on Ayers Rock, get sodden wet in Machupicchu! I want to surf!. I will get a hang-glider; I want to go back to the Grand Canyon and get further than just the rim rock this time, I want to see the aurora borealis from Svalbard or Greenland, I want to see a total eclipse, I want to watch pyroclastic displays, I want to walk inside a lava tunnel, I want to see the earth from space, I want to drink chang in Ladakh, I want to cruise down the Amazon and up the Yangtze and walk the Great Wall; I want to visit Azania! I want to watch them push helicopters off the aircraft carriers again! I want to be in bed with three women at once!
Oh God, back to Thatcher's Britain and Reagan's world, back to all the usual bullshit. At least the bridge was predictable in its oddness, at least it was comparatively safe.
Well, maybe not. I don't know.
I know one thing: I don't need the machine to tell me the choice. The choice is not between dream and reality; it is between two different dreams.
One is my own; the bridge and all I made of it. The other is our collective dream, our corporate imagery. We live the drean call it American, call it Western, call it Northern or call it just that of all we humans, all life. I was part of one dream, for good or ill, and it was half nightmare and I almost let it kill me, but it hasn't. Yet, anyway.
What's changed?
Not the dream, not the result of our dreams which we call the world, not our hi-tech life. Me, then? Maybe. Who knows; could be anything, inside here. Just won't be able to tell until I get back out again, and start living the shared dream, abandoning my own, of a thing become place, a means become end, a route become destination... Three of diamonds, indeed, and a quality bridge, an everlasting bridge, a never-quite-the-same bridge, its vast and ruddy frame forever sloughing off and being replaced, like a snake constantly shedding, metamorphosing insect which is its own cocoon and alway changing ...
All those trains. Going to be on a few more in the future too. Sure to get banned from driving. Stupid bastard. Writing the car off, drunk-driving just before Christmas; how embarrassing to have to come back to that. At least there wasn't anybody else involved, just me and the two cars. Not sure I'd have wanted to come back if I'd killed somebody, or even injured them badly. Hope whoever owned the MG didn't dote on it too much. Poor Jaguar. After all that time and money, after all the careful crafted work people put into it. Maybe just as well I didn't have it very long before I wrecked it; might have got sentimental about it, might have come to feel something for it ('Were you very attached to the car, Mr X?' Attached to it? I was jammed inside the bastard for three hours.').
And that bridge, the bridge ... have to make a pilgrimage to it, once I'm better; if I can. Walk over the water (assuming I can walk), cross the river; throw a coin for luck ha ha.
Sections three; first second third Forth Firth ... loco me loco ... There were great grey Xs in the road bridge towers too; I remember now. Three big Xs one above the other, like laces or ribbons ... and also ... and also ... what else? Oh yeah and I didn't get to hear all the Pogues tape either. Missed A Man You Don't Meet Every Day; fave track that; sing it kid ... Had the Eurythmics on the other side furra
bitta contrast like; young Annie beltin out wiff auntie Aretha; doin' it for themselves and why not? and singin Better To Have Lost In Love (Than Never To Have Loved At All); so it's a cliché? Clichés have feelings too.
I want to come back. Can I come back?
beep beep beep this is a recording; your conscious mind is out at the moment but if you'd care to -
clunk.
Can I? Can I please? I want to come back. Now. Now we try. Sleep; wake. Do it now.
Let's go there.
Very soon; waking. Before that, a word from our sponsors. But first, three little asterisks:
* * *
I was on the beach at Valtos once, one rainy and not too warm summer. I was with her and we were camping and we took a chemical which altered reality. Rain pattered softly on the tent; she wanted to stay in, looking at a book of Dali's paintings, but didn't mind if I went out.
I walked along the edge of the curving tide, where the waves ate into the golden crescent of sand; I was alone with a warm damp breeze and a mile or two of beach, rain smirring from the greyly wisping clouds. I found razor shells like fragments of a broken rainbow, and watched rain drops fall on some still dry sand as the wind blew over it; the whole beach seemed to heave and flow, like something living. I remember my delight, my childish touching of that sand and its dark spots, the feel of the grains blown across my fingers.
I was on the outer edge of the Outer Isles, rough sea to Newfoundland and Greenland and Iceland and the skull cap of rotating ice above the Pole; there at the end of the Long Isle which is many isles, a curve of broken land lying hard against the sea like a column of spine, like a blossoming of brain above a central system. My mind was that Isle, bared to the sweep of sea and weather by the cutting edge of the drug; a wide escape.
I thought I saw it all then; the way the brain flowers at the end of its articulated stalk; the way, our roots in the soil, we grow and become. It meant everything and nothing, at the time and still.
And to myself I said I've been away a far place ... because I was my own father and my own child, and I went away for a while but I came back. Child, your father's been away a far place. That was what I said to myself as I headed back: Child, your father's been away a far place.
... Yeah, sure, but that was long ago; what about now? I mean, good grief, six months without a drink or a smoke! I've probably been healthier lying here unconscious than I've been in the rest of my adult life; not much exercise maybe, but nothing more dangerous to ingest than whatever it is they shove down this tube in my nose. How the hell has my body survived six months without drink and drugs?
Maybe I'll become a reformed character, maybe I'll stop drinking and never smoke or snort or chew anything else ever again and when I do get my driving licence back I'll never exceed the speed limit again, and in future I'll never, never say anything nasty about our legally and democratically elected representatives or those of our allies and I'll have a lot more time and respect for other people's views no matter how fucking stupid they - No; if I was going to do that, why bother coming back? Bugger it; I'm going to do more of all that stuff just as soon as I can; I'm just going to be a bit more careful in future.
Child, your father's -
Yeah I know; so we heard. I think we got that message, thank you. Anybody else ...?
Our revels now are ended
(thanx bill)
These proceedings are closed
(ta Mac)
Brammer wakes-
(can we get that right, please?)
Brahma wakes
(thank you)
'sokay
(shut up; and get on with it)
Blackness.
No; not blackness. Something. A dark, almost brown red. Everywhere. I try to look away but I can't, so it isn't just the colour of the wall or the ceiling. Is this behind my eyes? Don't know. Dinnae ken.
Sound; I can hear something. It's like, having dived into a pool, floating back up towards the surface again; that sound, a sort of bubbling white noise, slowly altering in pitch from very low to high, and bursting like a bubble itself to -
Conversation, a woman laughing. Clinks and rattles, a wheel or a chair-leg squeaking.
Smell; oh yes. Very medicinal. No doubt where we are now. Something flowery, too; I can smell two scents here. One crude but fresh, one ... much more ... I don't know. I can't describe it... ah, the first one must be the bedside flowers; the ones in the vase on the cabinet. The second is her. Still wearing Joy, it would seem. Must be her; stuff doesn't smell like that on anybody else, even her mother. She's here!
Is this the same day? Will I get to see her? Oh don't leave yet! Stay; don't go!
Move something; go on, shift.
Totally disorganised here. Can't see a damn thing and I'm like a dozy puppeteer caught napping, stumbling around behind the scenes trying to find the right lengths of string, getting all in a tangle. Arms? Legs? Tootsies? Which bit works which? Where's the instruction manual ...? Oh God, we aren't going to have to learn all this stuff again, are we?
Eyes; open, dammit!
Twitch, hands!
Feet; come on, do your stuff!
... Somebody? Anybody?
Take it easy. Lie back and think of Scotland. Just calm down, laddie. Breathe, feel your blood pump, feel the tucked-in weight of the blanket and sheets, feel the tickle where the tube goes in through your nose ...
... All there. Can't hear anybody talking nearby. Just the hushed rumble of building and city. Slight breeze has taken the smell of Joy away ... probably not here at all. Still the colour of dried blood behind here ...
Slight draught again; feels funny on my cheek and the little bit of skin between nose and lip. Haven't felt a breeze there since I was a student; covered by beard all those years ... grow the thing back if I ever get out of here ...
I sigh.
I really do sigh; I feel the resistance of the tucked-in bedclothes as my chest rises higher than normal. The tube which enters me through one nostril slides across the fabric over my shoulder, then slips back as I relax and breathe out. I sighed!
I'm so surprised I open my eyes. The left lid trembles, gummed-up, then clears. Within seconds, though it all looks a bit shaky and bright for a while, everything settles down.
Andrea is sitting less than a metre away, her legs drawn under the small seat. One hand rests on her thigh, the other is holding a small styrofoam cup to her mouth, which is open, those lips parted. I can see her teeth. She is staring at me. I blink. So does she. I waggle my toes and - glancing down to the bottom of the bed - see the white jacket move up and down as I do so.
I flex my hands; damn rough blankets they have here. I am hungry.
Andrea puts the cup down, leans forward a little, as though she does not believe what she is seeing; she looks from one of my eyes to the other, apparently checking for signs of sense in both (not an unreasonable precaution, I'll admit). I clear my throat.
Andrea's whole body relaxes. I once watched a chiffon scarf drop from her fingers, and I do not recall that it flowed more gracefully. Her face loses a whole layer of worry, just like that; I - I have remembered my name - am almost embarrassed. She nods slowly.
'Welcome back,' she says, smiling.
'Oh yeah?'
END
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Document ID: 3a57f983-3f17-40a1-875f-cb841ec4decc
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