by Iain Banks
‘No.’
‘NG. Next Generation, taking over from the V-Ex. Out early next year. Kicks kitty-litter sand in the face of the PS2 and the X-box 360. Better, faster processor than top-of-the-line PCs. Processors plural, I should say - it’s got three, plus the best dedicated graphics card on the market. Eighty gig hard drive minimum, HD ready. Built-in broadband.’
Alban’s laughing at his cousin. ‘You’re in love, I can see.’
Fielding’s laughing, too. ‘It is one fuck of a machine. It’s going to define the console games market for the next five years.’
‘Yeah, no doubt.’
‘No, this is true.’
‘They got the software, the games ready?’
‘That’s what we’re talking about. We reckon the Empire! titles and derivatives are going to form a major part of the roll-out and their future plans. One of them might even be bundled with the initial release.’
‘Might?’
‘Yeah, as in maybe.’
‘They’re obviously keeping you well up to date with developments. ’
‘Hey, we’re partners, not Siamese twins.’
Al turns away again, but he’s thinking. ‘Ah, hah,’ he says softly. There’s a surprisingly long pause. ‘And you want to stand in the way of this fucking behemoth.’
‘And we can do it,’ Fielding tells him. ‘If people believe. I mean, we need to get to them before the EGM at Garbadale, but there’s time. We could do it. We’d need to be there at Garbadale, too, obviously, but there’s work to be done beforehand. Just a couple of weeks, max, Alban, that’s all. Expenses on me, obviously.’ Fielding leaves a gap. He can hear the river gurgling. ‘What do you think?’
Alban shakes his head. Says nothing.
‘Jeez, Al,’ Fielding says, ‘is the tree-chopping business so fucking entrancing you can’t tear yourself away?’
Alban laughs. ‘No,’ he says, pushing his fingers through his hair again. ‘I’ve been invalided out, anyway.’
‘What?’ Shit, Fielding thinks, did I miss something? Has Al sliced off a finger or some toes or something? He lost the top of one little finger years ago, not long after he first started this forestry crap, but has he lost something else?
‘See these fingers?’ Al says, holding up the index and middle fingers of each hand.
Fielding nods. ‘They all seem to be there.’
Al looks at them, too. ‘Yeah, but so’s something called white finger.’
‘What?’
‘You get it from too much vibration. Starts killing off blood vessels or something. The doc explained it all. Handled too many old chain-saws in my time. Shouldn’t really have happened so quickly but I must just be especially vulnerable.’
‘Shit. Is it sore?’
‘No.’ He rotates the fingers round in front of his face, inspecting them. ‘Lost a bit of sensitivity, and I need to watch they don’t get too cold in the winter, but I can live with it.’
‘So you’re out?’
‘Yup.’
‘Couldn’t they find you a desk job?’
Al grins. ‘It was the cutting-down-trees bit I liked. They offered me a driving job, hauling trees or stripping them or stacking or whatever, but I wasn’t interested.’
‘So . . .’ Fielding holds up both arms. ‘Why not—?’
He lets his voice fade as Al turns to look upriver again.
The waters run on away beneath them both.
‘Look,’ Fielding says, ‘won’t you at least come and see Beryl and Doris? Jesus, man, it’s only Glasgow.’ Actually, Fielding has himself a kind of horror of meeting the two great-aunts. Not that he’s going to mention that, obviously. ‘They’d love to see you,’ he tells Alban, possibly truthfully. ‘We could drive through today.’
Nothing.
Then Al says, ‘Maybe. I don’t know.’
God, Fielding thinks, he sounds depressed, defeated. Well, this is something, he supposes.
After a while Al says, ‘You said that pretty much the whole family’s going to be there, at Garbadale.’
‘They kind of have to be. Gran’s got - well, the Trust has got, but that means Gran - proxy voting rights for anybody who isn’t. Effectively.’
‘Okay,’ Al gives a big sigh. ‘And from the States?’
‘Oh, whole bunch o’ folks.’
Al’s shoulders shake with what might be another laugh. ‘We’re both being coy here, Fielding. We both know . . .’
This time it’s Al’s voice that trails off.
Fielding clears his throat and says, ‘I understand Sophie is going to be there. Cousin Sophie. She accepted the party invitation, registered for attendance at the EGM. I guess she’ll be there.’ A pause. ‘Though, obviously . . .’
Fielding is suddenly aware that he might be about to shoot himself in the foot while it’s still in his mouth, so he shuts up.
Alban puts his head down into the V of his outstretched arms and his clasped hands, as though studying the river passing immediately beneath.
As though praying.
He looks up and turns, smiling. ‘You fit for some lunch?’
‘Good idea,’ Fielding says.
They walk back towards the city.
‘Oh, God, are you all right?’
It took him a while to get the breath to wheeze, ‘Not really.’ He tried to curl up tighter, while being perfectly aware that this would do no good whatsoever.
The pain was about as bad as anything he’d ever felt. It seemed to radiate out from his groin like some terrible searchlight, forcing its ghastly dark rays of agony into every part of him, from his hair to his toenails. It went beyond pain, into other realms which included an encompassing feeling of cold and nausea and despair. It also seemed to be getting gradually worse. Alban had lived fifteen years and had never experienced anything like it. He hoped he never would again.
‘Oh, God, I’m so sorry.’ The girl took off her black riding hat and put it down on the brick path. She knelt by him, hesitating, then she put her hand on to his shoulder and squeezed gently. He was making a noise somewhere between a wheeze and a gurgle. She looked around, but there was nobody else in the walled garden. She wondered if she ought to go up to the house and alert somebody. How bad could this be? At first she’d thought he was exaggerating when he’d fallen like a sack of potatoes and curled up like a hedgehog. Now she thought he probably really was in intense pain.
Scrabbles gave a cough and flexed one hind leg again, backing towards the two of them. Oh, God, she might kick him again. Or her. She tutted and rose, chiding the tall chestnut mare and leading her to where she could munch on some carrot leaves, out of harm’s way. Then she went back to the boy lying clutched around his pain on the red-brick path. She bit her lip and patted his head softly. He had curly light brown hair.
‘That’s called a stringhalt,’ she said, not knowing what else to say.
He made a noise that might have been a ‘What?’
‘Sudden spasmodic lifting of a horse’s hind leg,’ she explained. ‘It’s called a stringhalt.’
He made a sort of keening noise and seemed to try to straighten out, then gasped and curled up again. ‘Thanks,’ he said. It sounded like his teeth were clenched. ‘That’s good to know.’ He paused for breath. ‘Felt more like a . . . kick.’
‘Actually, you’re right, it was more like a kick. I’m so sorry. Is it really, really painful, yah?’
He might have nodded. ‘Kinda.’
‘Scrabbles has never done that before.’
‘Sorry?’
‘Scrabbles. She’s never done that before. Kicked anyone.’
‘Really.’ Each of his words sounded clipped, bitten off.
‘Yah. You’re not really supposed to walk that close to the rear legs of a horse, ’specially one you don’t know.’
‘Uh-huh. Well,’ he said, ‘you’re not really,’ he took another shuddering breath, ‘meant to bring horses’ - one more breath, wheezing - ‘into a kitchen garden,’ he to
ld her. ‘Either.’
‘Sorry. Suppose not.’
‘And, are you deaf?’
‘I’m sorry? Oh, no. No, I was listening to my Walkman.’
‘What were you -’ he sucked air in raggedly ‘- listening to?’
‘Oh, ah, Now That’s What I Call Music; one of those.’
‘Right.’
She bit her lip again. All she’d been doing was taking a look round the old walled garden at the end of her ride round the estate and along the beach. She’d just got back from Spain and the first thing she’d wanted to do was take Scrabbles out for a hack. She patted the boy’s head again. His hair was very soft. She was pretty sure she knew who he was. ‘Should I go get help or something? What do you think?’
‘Dunno. Ice?’ He looked round at her and she saw his face properly for the first time. His face was contorted, right now, obviously, but she suspected it was probably rather nice when it wasn’t. He had beautiful brown eyes, the same colour as Scrabbles’ coat. She guessed he was a year or so older than her; sixteen, say. He reminded her a bit of Nick Rhodes, from Duran Duran. She felt she’d rather outgrown Duran Duran about a year ago, but she still had a soft spot for Nick. ‘Really no idea,’ he gasped. ‘Might need a doctor at some point. Just to check, you know?’
‘Shit, yah.’ She squeezed his shoulder again. ‘I’ll go up to the house.’
‘And will you get that animal out of my carrot lines?’
‘Yah, no problem. Back in a bit.’
She led the horse back through the tall gate in the west wall, walking quickly.
The pain came and went, like waves on a shore, every particle of sand a tiny raw testicle being rubbed up against every other one. Dear fucking God this was sore. Why did it have to be this sore? He’d taken a tennis ball in the balls once, maybe three or four years ago, and that had been bad, but this was infinitely worse. Were sex and orgasms and reproduction really worth this demented fucking agony? He’d never even got to do it properly yet, just wanking, and now it felt like he never would. Could balls actually burst? Fucking hell. He’d just been thinking lately it might be good to be a dad one day, eventually, but now maybe that was off the menu entirely, all thanks to some Yah-girl and her mad, man-hating, ball-bursting horse from hell. What he really wanted to do was stand up, take down his jeans and boxers and take a look at the damage, but he couldn’t, not when the girl might reappear at any moment, with Uncle James or Aunt Clara or his own parents.
Gradually - far too bloody gradually - the pain started to fade. He stopped feeling quite so sick. He pushed himself upright with one hand and sat carefully on the brick path running between the lettuce beds. He dried his eyes. He hadn’t really been crying as such, but the pain and the grimace it had forced on to his face had sort of squeezed his tear ducts, he guessed. He took a hanky from his pocket and blew his nose. Even that hurt. He coughed. That hurt as well. He started thinking about standing up, wondering if that would be painful, too. He looked at the black riding hat the girl had left lying on the path. A single long, curled red hair lay coiled around the velvety surface, shining in the sunlight like a vermilion meridian.
She was away five or ten minutes, then returned alone, swinging an ice bucket. ‘They’ve all bloody gone!’ she said. ‘Nobody there. Cars aren’t there either.’ He wiped away the last of his tears and looked at her. She was small, a good head shorter than he was. He guessed she was about his age. Quite curvy; well developed, was the phrase, he thought. She looked good in her long black boots, stretchy fawn trousers and long black jacket. Her gathered-up red hair glowed like copper in the sun against the shining blue of the summer sky. She sat down beside him on the raised edge of the path. Green eyes. Gently tanned skin, flushed a delicate red on her cheeks. Nice little nose. ‘Here. I got the ice.’ She plonked the ice bucket down on the path between his booted feet, then dug into her black riding jacket and pulled out a packet of pills. ‘Paracetamol. Thought these might help.’
He made a patting motion. ‘Thanks. I’ll be okay. It’s starting to go now. I’ll live.’ He put his hands on his knees, stared ahead and blew out a deep breath.
His hands looked long and strong and were incredibly dirty; brown with the soil and quite black under the nails. She felt herself shiver.
‘Well, yah. Phew, right?’ She smiled.
She had, he noticed, braces on her top teeth. She saw him glance at her mouth and closed her lips. It was almost a pout, he thought. She was very pretty. Well, apart from the braces, obviously. Then she stuck her hand out. ‘Sophie. You’re Alban, my cousin, is that right?’
He took her small hand and shook it carefully. So they were cousins. That was a pity. ‘That’s me,’ he said. ‘Pleased to meet you.’
‘Actually we have met, apparently, back when we were very young, but, ah, how-do-you-do anyway.’
He nodded. ‘Thanks for the ice,’ he said, leaning forward and scowling with pain again. ‘But I think I’ll just get back to the house. Nice cool bath, maybe.’
She stood and helped pull him up until he was standing, then retrieved the ice bucket and nestled herself under his right shoulder after seeing his first few, waddled steps. She stayed like that, supporting him, all the way back to the house. She was more hindrance than help, but it felt nice and she smelled good, cousin or not.
It was the second full summer he’d spent at Lydcombe since he’d grown up. But he already knew the place well. He’d been born in Garbadale, in the far north-west of Scotland. He and his real mum, Irene, and his dad had lived there until he was two, when the thing with his mum had happened. Then he and his dad had moved to Lydcombe. Both estates, with their large houses, were owned by the family trust. Who got to live where was largely a matter of choice but was ultimately in the gift of the family’s elder members. In those days, this effectively meant Grandad Bert and Grandma Win.
He couldn’t remember anything of his mother, or of Garbadale. Lydcombe was all he knew. They’d lived here and he’d grown up here, in the house when he was very small, but then, as he got bigger and stronger and braver, the place he really grew up within was the garden and the estate itself.
At first he only felt comfortable on the lawns and terraces around the house, usually staying close to his dad as he sat on his little stool before his easel, painting, but after a while he started to make friends with the Victorian walled garden, and later began to play inside the old apple orchard within the ruins of the ancient abbey. The orchard had gone to pasture and was used to help feed the estate’s few sheep and goats, which were more pets than anything else. Later still, expanding what he was starting to think of now as his domain, he began venturing out beyond these concentricities of safety and security and familiarity into the further meadows, copses, fields and woods of the estate. Then, one bright day, he rambled as far as the river with its banks strewn with wild flowers and bushes and, on that day of wanton exploratory zeal, even went on and out past that, across the broad, sluggish ford to the dunes and beach beyond, out to the margin of the land where the rollers boomed and the hills of Wales shimmered in the blue distance.
He’d started at Mardon Primary School, near Minehead. He explored the gardens and estate in the evenings and at weekends. Sometimes he would chance upon his dad, painting some distant view or part of the gardens. His dad sold paintings sometimes, though mostly they seemed to slowly fill up the walls of the house. School friends came to stay, and explored the estate with him. He felt he was special, somehow secretly in charge of it all. It was his.
His father married again. Alban was very suspicious of this Leah person at first, and insisted on calling her Aunt Leah, for ages. (A solemn, secret pledge whispered to the ghost of his real mother under the bedclothes one night.) But Leah was nice to him, even when he wasn’t nice to her, and his dad seemed happier than Alban could ever remember, and told him off less. His dad would let him sit on his knee and he always kept a small, spare canvas with him - Alban’s Painting - which he let the boy scrawl
on, encouraging him to spatter paint across the woven, giving surface. His father sometimes suggested subjects, or said not to hold the brush so tight, or just to use one hand, or pointed out colours that might be interesting, but mostly he just sat there, patiently, smiling, until Alban got bored and jumped down and went off to play again; then his father would set the little canvas aside once more and continue with his own work.
Alban made a slightly shamefaced apology to the memory of his real mother one night, then started to call Leah ‘Mum’.
After being frightened of him - and even resenting his presence - he started talking to the old gardener, Mr Sutton, who let him chatter away while he worked, and sometimes let him help.
Cordelia came along. This incredible new, tiny thing; a sister. Amazing. He realised suddenly they were a family. Cory took up a lot of his parents’ time, leaving him even more free to continue exploring the garden. Mr Sutton only came to the gardens in the afternoon of some days now, because he was getting on. Alban had started making maps of the garden, naming parts and features, invoking his own lore. They had very nice long, hot holidays abroad, and short, cold ones in Garbadale. Lots of sunshine was all right, for a couple of weeks, but then they had sun, sea and sand at Lydcombe, too, and the plants and gardens abroad always seemed rather garish and obvious compared to home.
As for the rocky desolation of the steep slopes around the waterlogged grounds and rhododendron-choked gardens surrounding the grim grey walls of Garbadale House; that meant little to him and somehow he never felt comfortable there. He did his best to enjoy whatever any given holiday offered (his dad had tried to get him to understand this: appreciate whatever life throws up, make the most of now, because all things change, and sometimes not to the good), but most holidays were merely different, not better, compared to life at home. After the first few days of any time away, he always found himself longing for Lydcombe, and whenever they returned from holiday he’d run out into the garden, across the lawns, through the orchard and the echoing abbey ruins, sometimes all the way down to the river and the sea.