by Iain Banks
‘Fu—’ Alban began. ‘Jeez, Beryl,’ he breathed.
‘Before I left for points east I found your father and talked to him.’ She paused. ‘Alban, has your father ever shown any aptitude for acting, or any sign of being especially good at lying?’
Alban was already shaking his head. Andy was a down-the-line kind of guy. Fairly quiet, arguably a bit boring; just a self-contained, buttoned-up kind of man. He’d been a good, caring father, and - as far as Alban knew - had never told a lie in his life. Jeez, he’d casually told Alban Father Christmas wasn’t real the first time he’d been asked directly. Even now, Alban could remember feeling horrified, and wishing his dad could have gone along with the story like everybody else’s.
‘Acting? Lying? No,’ he told her.
‘Hmm. Didn’t think so. I thought at the time that either your father had missed his vocation as an actor or he was telling the truth. Don’t think Andrew was the “he” she was talking about.’
‘She was only semiconscious, Beryl, maybe it was . . .’
‘Maybe it was all nonsense,’ Beryl stated.
‘Well, yes.’
‘Perhaps,’ Beryl said.
They were silent for a moment, then he said, ‘Who else could it have been? This “he”. Grandad?’
‘Or one of your uncles? Blake, James, Kennard, Graeme? I had no idea, frankly. I’m sorry to say I still don’t. Thing is, they all doted on you after you were born; Bert especially. If any of them didn’t want her to have it, they certainly changed their tune once you were on the scene.’
‘Anyway. This was nineteen-sixty-nine, not nineteen-forty-nine,’ Alban said. ‘It wasn’t that big a deal, being single and pregnant. Was it?’
‘The stigma was much reduced from my day,’ Beryl said. Something in her voice made Alban look at her closely. ‘Oh,’ she waved a hand. ‘Not me, but a couple of friends.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Not as sorry as they were.’
‘Did you mention this to anyone?’ Alban asked her.
Beryl frowned again. ‘Only to Winifred. I don’t know if she told anybody else.’
‘She never told me.’
‘No,’ Beryl said. She twisted some bedclothes into a knot in front of her. Then she allowed the sheets to unknot, and her hands to fall apart. ‘Perhaps I’m just a silly old woman, Alban. It was a long time ago and . . .’ She looked down, and Alban thought how suddenly infinitely frail and vulnerable she looked. Her voice died away.
Then she pulled herself up, cleared her throat and said, ‘Perhaps you ought to ignore me. Perhaps I shouldn’t have said anything.’ She smiled; a thin, wavering smile beneath rheumy eyes and a thin, skull-betraying face, yellow with age and marked by prominent blue veins. ‘Too late now, of course. Oh well. Put it down to this deck-clearing instinct, eh? One becomes frailer as one ages, in all sorts of ways. The burden of memories and . . . and secrets, suspicions . . . They all start to seem heavier.’ She fixed him with a very specific look and said, ‘They all start to tell, after a while.’
Then she yawned widely, putting one thin hand up to her narrow mouth. ‘I’d best get back to my own bed. Sorry to have disturbed you.’
‘That’s all right,’ he said. He watched her push back the bedclothes. ‘Beryl?’
‘Yes, dear?’
‘Are you telling anybody else about your health problems?’
‘Strictly need-to-know basis, dear. Tell people if you feel you have to, otherwise -’ she double-tapped the side of her nose ‘- shtum.’
Beryl slipped out from beneath the sheets.
As tiny and thin as a child, he thought.
She tucked the sheets back in efficiently.
She turned to go, then looked back. ‘What was all that nonsense about the company and shares and so on, this evening? What was Fielding on about?’
‘Spraint want to take over the whole company. Fielding’s trying to organise the opposition, allegedly with Gran’s backing.’
‘Oh. Is that it?’ She looked thoughtful. ‘I think I’ve only got about two or three per cent. Doris has nothing, of course.’
‘I’m sure Fielding would tell you it all adds up.’
‘Well, I’d never vote to sell out.’ Great-Aunt Beryl made her way to the door. ‘Might have just asked,’ she muttered. At the door she stopped, hand on the handle. ‘Oh, tomorrow?’
‘Yes, Beryl?’
‘You’re taking us to Ayr races, apparently. Hope you don’t mind.’
‘I’m sure it’ll be our pleasure.’ He smiled.
She started to open the door, then, frowning, said, ‘It’s not that big a favour, you know. We were going anyway; just means we can cancel the limo.’
Finally Fielding gets the chance to make his pitch, over breakfast the next morning. Al and he have to head out early to find the relevant supplies, and seem to be expected to make it (Alban volunteers, thankfully - Fielding’s cooking skills lie more in the appreciation rather than in the practice). The old girls seem horribly perky considering the amount of cherry brandy and peach schnapps they were pouring down their necks last night. Fielding is feeling a little the worse for wear, though hiding it well, and Al looks a bit tired (though at least, Fielding thinks, he’s trimmed the beard. It looks almost tidy. Seeing Mathgirl tonight apparently - must be love). Supposedly, last night Fielding agreed to take them all to some race meeting, though frankly he’s suspicious. Anyway, he’ll just have to think of it as entertaining clients, treat them like prospective customers, and keep up the patter. Soften them up over a fry-up and work on them over lunch.
The girls seem quite receptive. Later, though, while Alban and Fielding are clearing up and the old dears are upstairs getting ready for their day out, Al says, ‘You know, Fielding, I’m along here for the ride so far, but I’m not really here - and I won’t be going anywhere else - to mount some propaganda campaign against selling out. If I can talk to people, find out what they think, maybe help them think through what it is they really want, fine. But—’
‘Cuz, you either believe in this sale or not. Come on - get off the fence.’
He just smiles. ‘Yes, but trying to get people to do what they don’t want to do is generally stupid and self-defeating.’
Fielding is incredulous. How can anybody be so naïve? ‘Trying to get people to do what they don’t want to do,’ he tells his cousin, ‘is what advertising and marketing are all about.’
The races are actually okay. Fielding doesn’t place any bets, which the girls think is bad form; even Alban has a flutter (loses), but Fielding likes his bets with better odds. He does enjoy risk - that’s what business is all about - but the chances of success have to be greater, and more malleable, frankly. More open to being massaged and cajoled and controlled and all that stuff.
It’s an enjoyable, breezy day out, the course looks very jolly in a rather old-fashioned, white-painted-wood kind of way and you certainly see a few characters - all the trilby hats in Scotland and northern England seem to have come here, possibly to mate or something - plus they have a pleasant lunch. The girls get tipsy on G&Ts and white wine, and listen with obvious interest to Fielding’s pitch about not selling out to Spraint Corp. He’s thinking he’s almost done here. Mission accomplished.
Al has a couple of drinks but then switches to water. He is indeed seeing Mathgirl this evening and doesn’t want to arrive wrecked. Still, Fielding is pretty sure he catches him taking a swig of Beryl’s hipflask, after their one win of the day. Fielding, of course, is driving, which was okay on the way down but hellish getting away, trying to leave the car park.
‘I hate this,’ he says, as they wait their turn to exit, behind God knows how many hundred other cars. You should be able to pay for a quick-getaway car park, he believes; it would be worth it. Why aren’t the Gaga Girls VIPs? Alban, in the front passenger seat, doesn’t say anything. Beryl and Doris are in the back and have already made alarming noises about needing a loo before too long. They also look sleep
y, though. This could either be a lucky break or very bad for Fielding’s upholstery.
‘I hate this feeling of being stuck,’ he says, slumped over the steering wheel. ‘I hate being in queues, I hate being shepherded and corralled and controlled and treated like one of the herd. I hate this feeling of . . . inertia.’
‘What’s that, dear?’ Beryl says over the sounds. Fielding is playing some piano-ey classic stuff he keeps to impress clients, hoping it’ll take the old girls’ minds off their bladders.
‘I hate this feeling of inertia,’ Fielding says, more loudly. He hits the horn, just for the sheer hell of it.
‘Hmm? Eh? Say again?’ Doris says, sounding half asleep. At least slurred. ‘Hates what?’
‘Inertia,’ Beryl tells her.
‘Yes, dear. I know we are.’
Al looks round at her, then starts laughing. Beryl cackles, too.
Fielding shakes his head. Hipflask, obviously.
‘Questions and answers are not like the poles of magnets; one does not imply the other. There are a lot of questions without answers.’ So saying, she takes his right hand and studies it carefully in the late-evening light spilling from the window above the bed. She strokes each fingertip in turn with her thumb. ‘Can you feel this?’ she asks.
‘Just about.’
She kisses each finger delicately, making a tiny noise. ‘That?’
‘Mm-hmm. Kissing them better?’
‘In case I have any magical healing powers,’ she explains. She shrugs, pale breasts wobbling fractionally. ‘What is to lose?’
Verushka Graef is half Czech and, very occasionally, he thinks he can hear this in the way she puts words together. He can sense that ‘What is to lose?’ is going to join a short list of phrases he keeps, tiny talismans of difference, of adoration.
He’d done the same thing with Sophie, of course. He still does, forgetting - it sometimes seems to him - nothing, no matter how much he might wish he could.
Verushka Graef is long and blonde, with black dyed hair now growing out, fair roots showing. Her face is broad, eyes wide-set above a strong nose with curved, flared nostrils and - when her cornflower blue eyes are open - she is rarely without what appears to be an expression of constantly bemused surprise.
Just visible on the lightly tanned skin of her left flank Alban can see a tracery of narrow, shallow pink scars, altogether about a hand wide. Extending across her back, these have been caused by her being dragged seaward over a coral outcrop just off the coast of Takua Pa, an island north of Phuket, Thailand, and constitute a slowly fading souvenir of the Boxing Day tsunami.
When she moves, sometimes, there is a gawky, loose-limbed quality about her and unless she is concentrating on some physical activity she can appear awkward in her tall frame, like a still-growing teenager, unfamiliar in themselves.
‘Anyway, doesn’t it all depend on the sort of question?’ he asks.
‘Whether it has an answer?’ Her eyes are still closed. ‘Of course.’ She pauses. A tiny frown creases the space between her pale brows, the sole line on an unmarked face. ‘Though to define the question sufficiently precisely, you might have, in effect, to answer it. Which is not so helpful.’
‘It’s my family. Things are rarely helpful.’
‘You have an interesting family. I’ve liked the ones I’ve met.’
‘You’ve liked the ones I’ve felt safe letting you meet.’
‘You’re protecting them! How sweet.’ She opens her eyes and looks at him, grinning. She thinks of herself as fierce.
‘Of course,’ he says. ‘What was I thinking of? Of all the people to cosset.’
‘I am always available for cosseting.’
She is thirty-eight; two years older than he is. He remembers being surprised when she first told him this, a few days after they met in a hotel which could have been anywhere but was in fact in China. He also remembers being surprised that this age-difference disturbed him slightly, that he felt he should always be older than any girlfriend. What was that about? Why did he feel that?
He still has not ceased to be surprised that they are lovers, and not just because he feels like a Clydesdale to her thoroughbred. She is tall and blonde (well, usually blonde, and certainly she was when he first met her, in Shanghai) and slim - small breasts, narrow hips - when he had a thing for red hair - or rich brown hair - and curvaceous, voluptuous women. She has absolutely no intention of ever having children, while he still harbours a half-secret wish that one day he’ll be a father, part of a family. She is a mathematician, an academic, a sportswoman with no interest in gardening or plants - there isn’t a single green growing thing in this ascetically clean, sparsely furnished flat - and they even fell out and almost split up over the fucking Iraq war; he’d been reluctantly, suspiciously pro-war (and so now is even more disillusioned and cynical than before) while she had been anti-war from the start - in fact she’d been anti-war since 9/11, guessing that one atrocity would be used as an excuse to commit a still greater one.
At the time he’d thought this was over-cynical: he hoped now that was the last illusion he’d ever lose.
She lives on the top floor of a sandstone tenement in Partick, a building still stained with the soot of century-old smoke from the hearths of long dead fires, yet to be blasted clean, back to its natural pale red. The building is just fifteen minutes’ walk from Beryl and Doris’s house and only a little further from the university. The flat has a chunked, restricted view of the river and the low hills beyond Paisley. It is a bare place, sparsely dotted with furniture, without a television or a phone. There is one radio, and a dainty CD player beside a small bookcase full of Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and the collected works of Led Zeppelin. There are no curtains or blinds on any of the windows; she likes to wake with the dawn for most of the year and keeps an Air France sleep mask for the height of summer, when the dawn comes in the wee small hours.
This is all in odd contrast to her room in the Maths building, which is wildly untidy and contains three different computers, five screens from bulging cathode ray antiquity to wide-screen cutting edge LCD modernity, two TVs, an overhead projector and a square bookcase filled with a dozen identical red-and-silver lava lamps shaped like spaceships. There are even plants: a small yucca, two busy Lizzies and a dwarf cactus like a booby-trapped golf-ball. These were all gifts and she rarely remembers to water them; colleagues do. The only similarity to the flat is that she never closes the blinds. She claims her job involves a lot of staring out of windows, thinking, and curtains and blinds just get in the way, wherever she might be.
She had been raised in Glasgow, gone to university in Trier, completed a post-doc at Cambridge and her speciality was geometries; tilings, though she was prone - sometimes, after reading papers from other branches of the great growing tree of mathematical knowledge - to shake her head and mutter things like, ‘I really should have gone into number theory.’
She sporadically had quite involved and sometimes surprisingly heated email forum discussions with people way outside her field about things like the nature of consciousness and brain-bafflingly obscure questions such as, ‘Where are the numbers?’ (‘Where you left them?’ had been Alban’s suggestion.) That one was still unresolved; she was talking about this with a guy from St Andrews who was interested in the philosophy of mathematics - a speciality Alban had never even imagined existing but felt obscurely comforted to know did.
He’d opened a deep drawer in the living room once and discovered a collection of about forty glass millefiore paperweights. They were intricate, beautiful, vivid with colour.
‘Why don’t you display these?’ he’d asked, holding one up to the light.
‘Dusting,’ she’d explained lazily, from the couch. They were playing chess and she’d been considering her next move. He’d beaten her just once in over twenty games, and still half suspected she’d let him win that one.
Her only other extravagance was mostly underfoot; she loved Oriental carpets, the mor
e elaborate in design the better, and the otherwise bare boards of the flat were scattered with Persian, Afghan and Pakistani rugs. The flat had large rooms by modern standards, but only one bedroom and one public room; she had almost run out of floor space for the carpets and had started to hang them on the walls, which made the place, Alban thought, look a little more lived in, less cell-like. The general effect of the flat, though, was still pretty spartan.
Such austerity extended to her clothes. She dressed habitually in a white shirt with black trousers and jacket. She had about thirty almost identical white shirts/blouses, a dozen or so pairs of black trousers plus a few pairs of black jeans and half a dozen black jackets, all of which looked like they formed part of a suit, save for one, which was leather. Her shoes were sensible black lace-ups with minimal heels. She possessed a black coat and two pairs of black gloves for winter, surmounted by a black hiker’s ear-flapped hat in the very coldest weather.
She had a long black dress and a short black dress for very special occasions where she really couldn’t get away with the usual trousers, shirt and jacket outfit. However, by her own estimate, approximately ninety-nine per cent of the time - when she was not naked or wearing clothes specific to some sport or pastime - she stuck with the monochrome look.
‘What about holidays?’ he’d asked her.
‘Holidays don’t count, darling.’
Once - just once - he’d seen her wearing make-up, after a couple of girlfriends had persuaded her to let them apply some for a faculty party. She’d looked breathtaking, he’d thought, but not herself. She’d said that she felt like she was wearing a mask, and that it had been most unsettling at first.
Otherwise she wore no make-up at all and did not possess a comb or hairbrush. Alban had watched her morning routine several times: she splashed her face with water, rubbed vigorously, patted her face dry with a towel, then, with her hands still damp, straked her fingers through her short hair.