Digital Circumstances

by BRM Stewart

  I finished my can. ‘I could do with another beer. Want a drink?’ I looked round.

  ‘I’ll get you one,’ she said.

  I watched her ease through the crowds to the fridge. She disappeared from view, and my heart sank a little. Then she reappeared holding a can and a half-empty bottle of red wine, and her smile was the most wonderful thing I’d ever seen. She came back over, and stood very close to me. This was already the best evening I’d had in my life. I desperately tried to think of interesting things to say. Did she like computer games maybe?

  ‘So,’ she said, ‘we’re just two souls who don’t know where we’re going.’ We started on our drinks. She really was standing very close to me, and looking at my face. I was conscious of my old clothes, that I was a bit sweaty.

  ‘That’s a poetic way of saying it, but it serves me right for pissing about.’

  The music had been loud, but suddenly it got even louder. I couldn’t hear myself think, and I grimaced as Fiona said something. ‘What?’

  She smiled again and shook her head. Then she said something which I didn’t hear, and reached for my hand and gently led me.

  She took me upstairs and found a small spare bedroom, led me in, and firmly closed the door behind us. We sat in the gloom, on the bed, close together, drinking. The music thudded away elsewhere in the house.

  We talked about my dad, and those horrible months as he died – four years ago. I had never, ever talked to anyone about that before, especially not to Davey, my only real friend. I hadn’t realised the effect it had had on me, and on mum. She had become different after that – distant, lonely, unhappy. She hadn’t got on to me about school, hadn’t seem interested, until the blow-up when my spectacular failure came to light, probably partly blaming herself. I suppose my getting into computers had been a kind of withdrawal from the real world.

  We talked about my clever wee brother Peter who had died a couple of years before dad, and who had become some kind of unspoken saint, a ghost in the house, a benchmark for all of my failures.

  We talked about Fiona’s mum and dad. Her dad – he was Italian – and had simply walked out on Fiona and her younger sister two years ago, leaving her mum pretty financially screwed, except that he’d left her the house. Fiona had felt betrayed, still did: she had loved her dad, and couldn’t understand how he could have left them.

  We held each other tight, and then she put her face close to mine and I kissed her, the red wine from her mixing with the lager on my breath. At first I copied what I’d seen in films and on TV: I based my technique on the many scenes where Captain Kirk sweeps the beautiful alien off her feet. But after a few minutes it just became natural.

  We kissed and kissed. And we put our drinks down and our hands started moving, and I just gasped with the thrill and the pleasure of it all – that was what those things felt like! God, this was one for the autobiography.

  And as I started fumbling with her clothes to get to the feel of her skin, amazed that she was letting me do this, she smiled and pulled back. ‘I’ll do it.’ She took off her jumper and her bra, and then stood up to undress completely. I watched in disbelief till she was naked. A naked girl, in front of me, in real life. I tried to memorise everything.

  She smiled. ‘This is a bit one-sided, Martin.’ She slipped past me and under the covers.

  I took my clothes off – it had never been so difficult. I thought she would laugh at the sight of my pale scrawny body, but she didn’t.

  In bed, we held each other and kissed, and my hands were everywhere, gathering impressions. And then she parted her legs and I lay between them and prodded like the amateur I was.

  ‘You’re trembling,’ she said. ‘Calm down. You’re so lovely, so gentle.’

  I clumsily manoeuvred and panted. A few seconds later I groaned. ‘Oh, god.’

  ‘It’s alright – don’t worry.’ She held me tight, and kissed me, and – miraculously – I was ready again.

  ‘Don’t mind my asking,’ she said as we fumbled, ‘but is this your first time?

  ‘Ah, yes,’ I mumbled into her hair. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Don’t worry.’ She gave a sexy chuckle, and reached down between us and her soft fingers guided me in.

  I was awash with excitement, wonder, delight, fear. ‘How about you?’ I asked. ‘Are you a – er – ‘

  ‘No.’ Her voice sounded sad.

  What followed was absolute magic, and the time just flowed as we held each other, stroking and kissing. At the end, she was writhing under me, and cried out as she squeezed me tight, and we lay back, sweating and panting. I can still recall that first feeling of satisfying a lover, the best feeling in the world.

  ‘Well done, Martin,’ she gasped. ‘You’re a natural.’ I lay on my back, cradling her in my arms, holding her tight. I didn’t want this to end, ever. Stop the world, let me stay here.

  Rather late, I thought of a question: ‘Are you on the pill?’

  She gave that sexy chuckle again. ‘Actually I forgot for a few days, but took a double lot this morning. I should be OK. Don’t worry.’

  Rather late, I thought of another question, but decided not to ask. AIDS had been a problem in San Francisco and was spreading rapidly through Britain, but I was pretty sure it wouldn’t have reached Bearsden yet.

  I suppose I must have dozed off. When I awoke, Fiona was dressed. ‘I’m going to get a drink,’ she said. ‘Back soon.’ She picked up her glass and my empty beer can and opened the door, checked outside, and then closed it softly behind her.

  I lay grinning like an idiot, arms behind my head, and tried to fix every moment in my mind. God, I felt so good. I was a man. I’d had sex. A woman had wanted me – and she was lovely! Which meant I must be quite attractive too! Brilliant!

  Desperate for the toilet suddenly, I got up and dressed. I found a loo, just two doors down. When I came out, there was no sign of Fiona, so I decided to head downstairs to find her.

  On the landing was a door which was ajar. I looked in automatically as I passed it. There was a desk with an anglepoise light, and what looked like an Amstrad PC on a computer desk. There was a man sitting on an office chair, and as I looked at him he started a string of swearwords. I stopped outside the door. He turned and stared at me, still obviously angry.

  ‘Can I help you?’ His voice was a low growl. He had short grey hair, receding at the front, and a tough, angular face. His eyes were clear, cold blue. His long neck was a network of sinews and veins. He wore a shirt and jeans.

  ‘Sorry – I’m Martin, one of Charlie’s pals from school. At the party.’

  ‘Oh, right.’ He turned back to the VDU.

  ‘Are you having problems?’

  He didn’t look round. ‘Fuck off, son.’

  ‘OK.’

  But before I had gone two steps his growl came again. ‘Do you know anything about these fuckers?’

  I stepped back to the doorway. ‘Yeah, quite a bit actually.’

  ‘This fucking machine is driving me mental.’ He dropped his hands from the keyboard to his sides, and sat back.

  I took that as an invitation, so I stepped into the room and looked at the screen. He had a blank spreadsheet open. He was holding a 5½” floppy disk in his hand and looked like he had tried to shove it into the 3” disk drive on the Amstrad.

  I glanced round the room – obviously a study – and saw the BBC Micro with its monitor and twin 5½” disk drives (and the 6502 co-processor unattached beside it) on another desk. I also saw the bookshelves and the steel filing cabinet with the security lock over the drawers, but it was the BBC Micro that told me what I needed to know: a previous flirtation with computing that had been abandoned until someone had talked him into trying again in the new world of the IBM clone.

  ‘That won’t fit,’ I said.

  He took a deep breath and was about to say something sarcastic that began with F.

  ‘And even it did, you wouldn’t be able to read the data off it.’

 
He exhaled slowly. ‘OK,’ he said.

  ‘Were you using ViewSheet on the BBC?’

  He raised his eyebrows and turned to me, realising that I really did know what I was talking about. ‘You a fuckin’ psychic?’

  ‘And you’re using Supercalc on the Amstrad?’

  ‘Yes.’ The word tailed into a hiss.

  I nodded. Cheekily, I just looked at the VDU, and said nothing more. He had a blank spreadsheet on the screen.

  ‘So, what can I do?’ He got up and leaned past me to close the door. Then he retrieved a chunky, crystal glass full of whisky from beside the computer, and took a good drink of it.

  I thought for a minute. Between us, Davey and I would be able to sort this out, and it would only take us an hour or so. Should I offer? Should I mention a charge? Should I suggest it was really hard and would take us a day or two?

  ‘Me and my pal could sort this out for you. We might need to get a lead, but apart from that it won’t be a problem. It should only take a couple of hours.’

  I could sense he was thinking whether to offer money. ‘That would be… good,’ he said. ‘I’ll pay for the lead of course.’

  ‘Great.’ Davey probably already had a suitable lead, but we’d charge anyway.

  ‘And if it works I’ll pay you for your time. Can you get here this afternoon – ‘ he had glanced at his huge gold wristwatch – ‘at around three?’

  I nodded. ‘Sure.’

  I headed downstairs to find Davey and tell him what we were doing the next day and to find where Fiona had got to. The party seemed to be quietening down.

  I found Davey, slumped on a settee with a can of lager dribbling down his chest. I managed to wake him up. I tried to explain what was going on before he lost consciousness, but he didn’t understand. ‘Look, I’ll come round for you at one o’clock tomorrow,’ I shouted at him. That seemed to register. ‘Make sure you’re in. We have a wee job to do. I’ll explain then.’

  He nodded again and his head lolled back. Obviously I had to get him home. But first I had a good look round the party: no sign of Fiona. I collared Charlie. ‘Have you seen Fiona?’ ‘Who?’ ‘Wee, dark hair, dressed normally – no outfit.’ He seemed to think, then shook his head. ‘No idea, mate.’

  I spent ages looking around, checking the bathrooms, the other rooms, and back up to the wee bedroom where we’d had sex – if I ever became famous, would they put a wee blue plaque on the door? – but she wasn’t there. I didn’t even know her second name. I asked a few people – Abba, and the guy with the sledgehammer – but nobody knew her.

  But I still had my warm, happy feeling as I staggered home with Davey through the empty suburbs. OK, she was gone, but others would surely follow. I grinned. What a night.

  The day when everything changed. Suddenly I didn’t care about the exam results. I was a man. I’d had sex. I could do anything.

  *

  ‘My name’s Ken, by the way. Ken Talbot.’ He was wearing a suit and tie today. Standing up, he wasn’t as tall as me, but had a presence about him. He was always looking, his narrow eyes focused, always thinking.

  We’d got back to Charlie’s dad’s house on time on the day after the party, as promised, despite Davey’s killer hangover. I was still high from my first sexual experience – and I really wanted to see Fiona again – and probably still drunk. I couldn’t keep the smile from my face, and Davey was starting to get pissed off.

  Davey was the hardware man, and I was doing the software. I hadn’t used an Amstrad before, but I’d read all about them and the CP/M operating system, and I knew what to do: it was an ability I had - still do. Davey attached the serial lead, and got the computers talking to each other, and then he slumped in the corner, eyes half-shut, but ready in case I needed help or advice.

  In under two hours, even with hiccups over dropped connections, we had all of Talbot’s spreadsheets across from the BBC discs to the Amstrad, and I did a bit of tweaking. Talbot sat down and checked that they opened properly, that his data was intact. I was looking over his shoulder, but he turned and suggested that ‘you two kids’ go downstairs till he called us. I nodded. I had seen a list of names and addresses – people and businesses - with amounts of money and dates beside each, going on for row after row.

  Davey and I went downstairs. Charlie was in the kitchen, drinking tea and looking immaculate. The kitchen, and the whole house, seemed to have been restored to normality – no sign of so much as a beer bottle cap or a crisp or a ring-pull tab on the kitchen floor. I looked around at the cupboards and the appliances, and thought of my mum’s ancient gas cooker, our tiny fridge.

  ‘Fuckin’ brilliant party, eh?’

  I agreed, and Davey nodded, not trusting himself to speak – he looked like he was trying not to be sick. His long black hair was spectacularly greasy today, hanging over his pale acned face.

  I tried again to find out about Fiona. ‘There was a girl – Fiona,’ I said. Charlie frowned and shook his head. ‘Wee, dark-haired. Wasn’t in any kind of outfit, just a dark jumper, dark trousers. Been to art college. Ring a bell?’

  Charlie shook his head. ‘Sorry, mate. What’s her second name? Where does she live?’

  I shrugged, suddenly hopeless. I didn’t even know which art college she might have been to. Shit. Oh yes: ‘She’s probably got a kind of Italian-sounding second name.’

  Charlie shook his head again. ‘Want me to ask around?’ Then his face lit up: ‘Did you shag her, yah dancer!’

  I nodded, trying not to look smug.

  ‘So, no more a virgin nerd, eh? Never mind, Davey, your time will come.’

  There was a shout from above, and we went upstairs again to his dad’s study. Talbot pointed to the screen with its lists of names, and started asking us questions: could he put it in order of amounts of money? Could he flag up rows with amounts over, say, a grand; could he copy certain columns or rows onto another sheet so that certain people could only see certain information? I answered all his questions, explaining about hiding rows (he understood that), and conditional formatting (he looked blank). Finally he nodded, eyebrows raised, and stood up. ‘Come on down and get a cup of tea and we’ll have a wee chat.’

  We sat in the kitchen again, but he told Charlie to leave us alone, which he did, saying he was heading into town. Talbot made us cups of tea.

  ‘Right, boys,’ Talbot said, ‘what do I owe you?’

  Davey told him what the lead cost – ‘might as well keep it here in case there’s other stuff you want to copy over’ – and then I said: ‘and there’s our time of course.’

  ‘Of course.’ He was still standing with his wallet in his hand. ‘What do I owe you for ‘your time’?’

  ‘Eh… a tenner? Each?’ I suggested.

  He laughed, and handed it over. ‘A tenner each.’ He put his wallet away, and stood up. ‘OK, boys, I need to chase you – I have things to see, people to do.’ He laughed again.

  ‘If you need any more help, just give us a shout,’ I offered. ‘You want my phone number?’

  ‘If I need you, I’ll find you. Don’t you worry.’ His voice was cold now.

  Outside, I laughed aloud. I had had sex, and I had a tenner in my pocket. And part of me realised I had a skill that could maybe earn me more tenners, but I wasn’t sure how. Meanwhile, this money was going straight to mum – that might keep her sweet, show I was going to pay my way.

  Life was suddenly good. Promising, in a vague sort of way.

  Chapter 4

  Last autumn – Portugal and Glasgow

  For the rest of our holiday after the murder in Portimao, I was on tenterhooks.

  ‘Ever since that Neanderthal guy and little-miss-perfect-blonde appeared, you’ve been on edge. What’s going on?’ Helen would say, regularly. She knew something was preoccupying me; that wouldn’t of itself have bothered her too much, but the obvious fact that I was keeping a secret from her did. It struck at the heart of our relationship.

  ‘I’d like to explore
Portimao, and we need to do that boat trip up-river to Silves that we planned. And we’ve hardly used the hire car: let’s explore along to Sagres, or into the mountains.’

  I agreed of course, though I sensed that it was not going to be comfortable for me.

  We drove to the same rough car park by the marina, but to a different area. The boat was big, with the whole of the flat roof covered with solar panels. The two hosts greeted us with smiles and chat, and we joined the other eight passengers. They were three British couples and two single Dutch women, all in their sixties or seventies.

  Our two hosts – one young guy, barely twenty, and an older man around my age – gave a continuous flow of banter and jokes, which kept everyone amused; but my smiles were rather fixed, and my laughter the quietest of us all.

  I re-lived my journey from that day – no sign of the fishing boat in that big, crowded marina – as we crawled past the bunkering station, then round the harbour wall, towards the estuary. As we turned to head upstream, I could clearly see the houses on the other side, a couple of police cars parked, a couple of GNR police wandering around, keeping an eye on things – but otherwise the area was deserted.

  A thought came into my head and I looked around the harbour area for CCTV cameras, but there was nothing I could see. I remembered that Charlene had wiped the house clean of our fingerprints – but what price getting trace DNA from my sweaty fingers on the computer keyboard?

  But even if – somehow – the police tied me to the house, surely there was no way they could implicate me for the murder. Maybe the murder had nothing to do with our visit at all.

  I settled back in the boat as we cruised underneath the motorway bridge, with its storks’ nests. Helen looked at me, and I gave her a wide smile, and held her tight. It would be OK, I told myself.

  We had a lovely trip up to Silves, and then a couple of hours to browse round the steep streets of the city, and up to the castle. On the way back, we were plied with beer and wine, and fed a chicken salad. The crew got funnier and more outrageous, and I relaxed.