by Iain Banks
Mr Sutton got really, really old and went into a Home; two lads from the village both called Dave did some gardening stuff sometimes, but they weren’t interested in talking to a kid Alban’s age. They used to make jokes about the herb garden which he didn’t understand, and they didn’t seem to care about the garden the way Mr Sutton had, but that just left it more to him, he felt.
Later, he wished he’d stopped just once to think about what a wonderful, privileged, graced life he’d been living then.
What happened, when he was eleven and about to go to big school, was that his dad sat him down one day and told him they were leaving Somerset, leaving Lydcombe. His dad was joining the family firm. He would need to work in the company’s main office. They would still come back, of course they would, but they were off to the big city now: London! Well, Richmond, which wasn’t far away, and had good train connections with the centre. They’d sorted out a good school nearby where he could be a day pupil and everything.
They’d left Lydcombe. Another lot of people, some aunt and uncle and their children - he was supposed to know them, but he couldn’t remember meeting them - were going to live there now, now that his dad was taking up a new post in the family and working in London.
He felt betrayed, exiled, cast out. Richmond was a strange, crowded, busy place after Lydcombe. The house was only a little smaller, apparently, but much more vertical and far more ordered; fewer eccentric corridors, half-landings, erratic staircases and oddly shaped rooms. It felt tight and constrained after Lydcombe, as though the building was forever standing at attention, incapable of relaxing. The garden was supposed to be huge but this was nonsense; he paced it out and reckoned it was barely half the size of Lydcombe’s walled garden alone. His dad was out to work most of the time.
Being taken to films and shows in London made up for some of this, but not all. School, after a couple of awkward weeks, was actually a comfort. All he had to do was alter his accent a little - though it had never been especially West Country in the first place - and take up the challenge of one boy who was older and even bigger than he was, but slow. They shook hands after the fight, which he thought was slightly hilarious; very jolly hockey sticks. He enjoyed learning, enjoyed being one of the lads, enjoyed being taken to London (especially if it was just him and his dad) and being allowed to wander the streets and parks of Richmond with his pals, but he missed Lydcombe more - he realised one terrible night - than he missed his dead mother.
Now Lydcombe had become the place to go on holiday to, rather than the place to go on holiday from; a destination, temporary and somehow conditional. The first time they went back, he noticed that the half-dozen or so of Andy’s paintings that had been left behind, a present to the house and its new inhabitants, had all been shifted, consigned to bedrooms rather than left in public spaces. If Andy was bothered by this, he didn’t say.
He had visited the estate with his mum and dad and sister Cory every year since the great move to Richmond, sometimes stopping for a week or two, sometimes just staying overnight, but he could only barely remember Sophie. He thought they’d each been five the last time they’d met. He had a vague recollection of having made her cry.
Since then their paths had contrived not to cross, even though Lydcombe was her home. Sophie was the child of Uncle James and his first wife, not Uncle James and Aunt Clara, so she was away a lot staying with her birth mother in Spain.
The first time he worked out the implications of this, he thought how weird it must be. Having two mothers wasn’t weird - he was used to that - but having two mothers who were each still alive. That was bizarre. It was only when he began asking other kids about this sort of thing that he started to realise it wasn’t that strange at all. Adults were definitely strange though.
He’d started taking charge of the garden at Richmond almost without noticing, from when he was about twelve. They had a gardener who came in, and he hung around with him a lot, asking questions, helping out and doing some of the spade work and the other heavy-lifting stuff that hurt Mr Reynolds’ back. He grew to love the work, love the horti lore, the vast hidden store of knowledge that seemed to exist behind every leaf and blade and petal and sod.
Kew Gardens was not far away. He went there first with his parents, one cool, misty autumn day, in a bad mood for some forgotten reason and really not wanting to be there at all, or anywhere with them (Cory came too, all simpering and sweet for a change, as if sensing his mood and deliberately trying to provide a contrast), but he was reluctantly impressed with the trees and shrubs and the stately, towering confection of the Pagoda looming through the haze. Then came the glasshouses. Those he was quietly stunned by, their smell and heat and pressing humidity containing a whole, fragrant, fabulous world of riotous greenery - plants from everywhere, dreamlike caricatures of plants, some almost night-marish, as though from alien worlds, all flourishing luxuriantly here under a grey English sky. Jets, also from all over the world, roared overhead in the murk every few minutes, on their way into Heathrow. He had to lean over and peer at labels as casually as he could, not wanting to show how deeply impressed he was, how much this was meaning to him. He already knew he’d be coming here a lot.
When he was asked what he wanted to do for his summer holidays in ’84 - he was fourteen and had been invited to come and stay with various outposts of the family, from Garbadale to the States to the Far East - he said he’d like to go to Lydcombe and work in the garden.
By the end of that first summer he’d already almost started to think of the place as his home again. The house itself was all very well, but it was the estate, the gardens, the plants - flowers, shrubs, trees and vegetables, even the differing species of grass on the lawns and meadows, as well as the animal life that they supported - that fascinated him.
An interest in horticulture was a bit naff, as his school pals had taken some satisfaction in telling him, and in a way he knew they were right. But there you were. He just found all this green, supposedly boring stuff utterly spellbinding. God help him, he was a teenager who got a real kick out of growing vegetables.
‘So, sitting on a rubber ring are we, Alban?’ Uncle James asked. ‘Pass the peas.’
‘Oh, my poor boy,’ Leah said, for perhaps the fifth time, from the other side of the table. There was a comforting smile on her face and a small, sympathetic groan in her voice.
‘Muuum,’ Alban said, glaring at her. Leah just smiled more widely. Alban passed the bowl of peas towards the head of the table. ‘Actually, it’s a cushion, Uncle,’ he told Uncle James.
God, this was embarrassing. He was horribly aware he must have sounded like a little child calling Leah ‘Mum’ like that. Not even just ‘Mum’, but ‘Muuum’, the sound all stretched out just as though a little kid had said it. He glanced down the table at Sophie, to see if she was smirking or giggling or anything, but she was just helping herself to more potatoes.
‘You poor lad,’ Aunt Clara said, brusquely. ‘Got to be careful round horses.’ Clara was a large, florid lady, prone to wearing smocks and headscarves. Alban didn’t think he’d ever seen her with her - sometimes disquietingly orange - hair worn down.
‘Doc says there’s no permanent damage,’ Andy said. Alban’s dad had insisted on being present when the doctor had examined him. That had been kind of embarrassing, too, though Andy had been very sympathetic. And it had been a young, female doctor. That had been excruciatingly embarrassing.
‘Family line secure then, is it?’ Uncle James asked Alban’s dad. Uncle James was a sort of nouveau fogey. He wore lots of waist-coats, those yellow check shirts real farmers rarely wear, and corduroy trousers, all of which helped bulk out his already slightly oversized frame. He had thick curly black hair, rosy cheeks and a nicely developing paunch.
Andy just smiled. Alban’s dad was normal in comparison; thinner, with straightish black hair already going grey. He had a kind-looking face with crinkly bits round his eyes that usually made it look like he’d spent his life smili
ng, but which occasionally - if you caught him just sitting alone, staring into space the way he did sometimes, and he hadn’t noticed you - made him look very sad, until he realised you were there.
‘You’ll be fine, won’t you, darling?’ Leah said, still smiling across at Alban. Alban’s mum was slight and pale but with the sort of cheerful character people usually associated with somebody twice her size. She had luxuriant quantities of curly blonde hair which she called her crowning glory. Also, as more than one of Alban’s school pals had pointed out to his intense discomfiture, she had - for her age - great tits.
‘I’ll be fine,’ he muttered. He bent over his plate and started removing the fat from the edges of the pork chops.
‘Hope you weren’t doing a Geldof in front of my little girl, Alban,’ Uncle James said, slathering apple sauce over his plate.
‘Sorry, Uncle?’
‘Swearing, like that Geldof guy. It’d only be natural, after getting kicked in the nuts like that; can see that, but I’m just hoping you managed to constrain your profanities from my little girl’s ears.’
‘James, please,’ Sophie said, rolling her eyes.
Sophie’s father made a show of turning round in his seat to look behind him at the dining-room door. ‘Somebody else come in?’ he asked, frowning mightily. ‘Somebody called “James”?’
‘Dad, Da, Pater, Papa,’ Sophie said through tight lips, glaring at him.
‘Oh! It’s me!’ Uncle James said, turning back. ‘Sorry, daughter.’
‘You’ll be glad to hear I didn’t have any spare breath to swear, Uncle,’ Alban told him. He glanced down the table. ‘Your daughter’s delicate ears were unpolluted.’
Sophie snorted. (‘Dear, really,’ her mother said. ‘You sound like a horse.’)
‘I can swear fluently in three different languages,’ Sophie said brightly, ‘Mother dear, Father darling.’
Uncle James was shaking his head. ‘Geldof geezer. Really. What was that group he used to be in? The Boomtown Cats?’
‘Rats,’ Alban said.
‘Oh, quite,’ agreed Uncle James. ‘Couldn’t believe it when he started swearing like that. On television.’
‘Dad, it was a month ago,’ Sophie protested. ‘Can’t you leave it? Anyway, he did it, it worked; he got people to give him their “fookin money”. And “fook the address”.’ She widened her eyes, lowered her voice and made a reasonable impersonation of an Irish accent as she pronounced the last three words. Cory, Alban’s minuscule but massively annoying eight-year-old sister, made a shocked peeping noise. Alban, laughing involuntarily, nearly choked on a mouthful of pork.
‘Now that’s enough, young lady,’ Uncle James said, suddenly serious and going rather red, pointing his fork at Sophie. ‘This is the dinner table.’
‘How much did you give to Live Aid, Daddy?’ Sophie asked. Alban would have sworn she fluttered her eyelashes.
‘That’s not really your concern, frankly,’ Uncle James told his daughter, and smiled.
‘Well,’ Sophie said emphatically, ‘I gave all the money I’d saved to go skiing last year.’
‘You mean all the money that I gave you to go skiing.’
‘It doesn’t matter where it came from,’ Sophie said emphatically, ‘what matters is where it went.’
‘Well bully for you. Hope the Ethiopians sent you a thank-you note. Now I’d like to get on with my dinner, if that’s all right with you.’
Sophie made a growling noise and stared at her plate.
‘Sophie, dear. Are you sure you won’t try one of the chops?’ Aunt Clara asked suddenly.
‘Mum,’ Sophie said, exasperated, ‘I’m a vegetarian!’
‘Yes, I know, dear. But they’re awfully good.’
Sophie just rolled her eyes. Her gaze caught Alban’s, and they shared one of those rueful parents, eh? smiles.
Back to Tango’s unlocked flat (these people live the US sitcom dream, where friends just wander into your apartment. Ha ha). From the living room, a voice Fielding doesn’t recognise is saying,
‘Whit are ye talkin’ aboot? If ye take aff all yer clothes, of course ye’re fuckin’ naked.’
‘No, but,’ Tango says, ‘what I’m sayin’ is, if ye’ve got a tattoo, ye canny take that off. So you’re never totally naked. De ye no’ see?’
‘Ah see yer aff yer chump, that’s - Oh-aye, it’s Yakuza. How’s it hingin, Yak?’
Al says, ‘Afternoon all.’
The new arrival proves to be a fat wee guy with hilariously long dark hair. He’s wearing jeans and a black leather waistcoat and looks like a roadie for Black Sabbath circa 1970. Two narrow-set eyes, a large nose and a fat spliff all poke out through the curtains of hair on either side of his face. He looks puzzled when he sees Fielding, then sort of nods. The only other person present is Tango, with whom Al requests a word. They head out of the room. Fielding sits down on the couch, thinking how good it’s going to be to get out of here. There’s a familiar-looking silvery box sitting by Tango’s television, wires joining one to the other and a couple of games controllers lying on the carpet beneath the TV. The wee fat guy sits and looks at Fielding while Fielding looks at him, determined not to be stared down. Fat Boy smokes prodigiously, creating a thick grey screen in front of what little of his face isn’t obscured by hair. After a while he grins and holds the joint out. ‘Want a toke?’
Fielding nearly does, just because he’s expected to say no, but sense prevails. ‘No, thanks. Driving.’
The hairy guy nods, sucks another lungful. He holds it, then breathes out. Fielding thinks about opening the window again. He suspects he’s getting stoned just sitting in the same room. ‘Don’t believe we’ve been introduced,’ the hairy guy says at the end of the next exhalation.
‘Fielding.’
‘Aw aye. Ah’m Burb.’
Fielding smiles perfunctorily and nods. The hairy guy sees Fielding glance at the games machine. ‘That’s mine,’ he says. ‘Goanae play a game, me an’ Tango.’
‘Really.’ Fielding spots the DVD lying on the shelf holding the TV, recognises the cover immediately, and grins broadly.
Alban and Tango come back. ‘Maybe just a day or two,’ Al’s saying. Slung over one shoulder is a small backpack, not the scruffy great torso-sized squaddy-issue monster Fielding had seen earlier. Guess I haven’t been quite as persuasive as I’d hoped, Fielding thinks. Still, one thing at a time.
Al looks at him. ‘You fit?’
‘Vamanos muchachos,’ Fielding says, standing.
‘See you later, big man,’ Tango says, seeing them to the front door. ‘Nice tae meet you, Fielding. Anytime.’
‘Too kind. You take care.’
Through in the living room, Fielding can see Burb turning on the Spraint Corp V-Ex games machine. Into the slot is slid the disc that bears the legend Masters of EMPIRE!
2
Once, in the middle of the night, in the centre of a great plantation, he’d been drinking with a couple of his coworkers; good guys who’d become pals. They were on Speyside, in what had been a big forest, staying in an old caravan the forestry people had provided. They’d been drinking whisky and cans of beer and playing cards. He’d been making steady money at poker through the evening until a couple of wild bets towards the end of the night when he’d lost most of what he’d accumulated and they all ended up fairly close to where they’d started. They’d had a cup of tea and a biscuit about three o’clock, then collapsed snoring and smelly into their sleeping bags. Tomorrow was supposed to be a full working day but they knew the foreman was away in Inverness until at least noon, and they were ahead of schedule.
He awoke before dawn with a painfully full bladder. He stumbled in the darkness, stepped into his unlaced boots and went out to pee wearing just his briefs.
It was late summer and a clear night. He stood in the bright light of a full moon, a few feet away from the caravan, peeing into the tumble of branches near the side of the road. They’d been clearing the trees, the f
inal cut, bringing down the tall Sitkas, stripping them with machines like giant pencil sharpeners, carting them off on big trucks. What was left - what he could see as far as a ridge a kilometre distant - was a chaos of smashed branches and torn pieces of smaller trees; a pale jumble of fractured wood like something from a volcanic disaster or the first days of a war. He looked up at the stars, then back down at the frozen fury of shattered wood. The pee went on. It had been a very full bladder. He’d better drink some water when he went back in or he’d have a head in the morning.
The fox trotted silently round the corner of the caravan and stopped, head slightly to one side, looking up at him. It was beautiful. Its coat shone in the moonlight: inky black, brilliant white and a red he wasn’t sure he could actually make out in the moonlight or was just seeing because he knew it was there. The light was so intense he could see the moon reflected in the creature’s eyes. A hint of moisture glistened on its black nose.
He looked back at it and slowly tipped his head to one side, too. The fox took a couple of cautious steps forward, putting its nose near where his urine was landing. He was very tempted to twist his body ever so slightly and direct the piss straight at it - it was, he thought, what most of the guys would have done - but he didn’t. The fox took a delicate sniff, then looked up at him again. He was about out now, the stream of pee falling back and breaking up. He smiled at the animal and shrugged. The fox trotted round and past him, head slightly down, giving him one last glance before it disappeared round the other end of the caravan.
He hadn’t ever mentioned this to anybody, not even to the guys the next morning. It wasn’t all that remarkable, anyway - they saw deer and squirrels all the time and sometimes stoats and wild cats and pine martens - but it was something he wanted to keep to and for himself. He wondered if the fox had lived in the forest and was having to leave because it was all torn up now, or if it was moving in after new opportunities had been opened up for it, or if it didn’t - and perhaps couldn’t - care. He wondered if the animal had somehow known that men had created this monoculture plantation over the ruins of earlier forests, then created the chaos, and whether it could in any sense blame them.