by Iain Banks
‘Well, there you are then.’ Haydn sighed.
Alban made a clicking noise with his mouth. ‘I think we need more drink.’
They found a little dive bar - smoky but just about bearable - somewhere near the Invalides, the Eiffel Tower visible above the buildings beyond the gardens, golden-lit, searchlight revolving at its summit. The bar was perfect; almost a cliché. There was even a trio of guys on a small stage in one corner playing jazz. Alban had to stifle a laugh and look around as they got to the bottom of the steps, claiming to be trying to spot hep cats dressed in black polo-necks and wearing berets. ‘Only in Paris,’ he breathed as they walked to a table. He made sure it was near an air duct, to keep Haydn happy.
She came down the steps ten minutes later, dressed in black; mid-length skirt, blouse, a small jacket like a bullfighter’s, glittering with detail. She was medium height, with a figure the svelte side of full, and long hair that was dark, dark red. She looked vaguely Asiatic, but was somehow not immediately placeable even roughly anywhere between Istanbul and Tokyo. And her face was one that even a pessimist might grant could stop wars; exquisite, serene, flawless. Alban immediately tried to fit her into his Top Ten Most Beautiful Women I’ve Ever Seen With My Own Eyes list. That is, he immediately tried to fit her into his TTMBWIESWMOE list anywhere except number one, because he’d met Kathleen Turner once on a flight to LA with his dad when he’d been sixteen, shortly after he’d seen The Man with Two Brains, and he’d sworn to himself the Kathleen he’d met that day would keep the number-one spot for ever, no matter what.
It didn’t work.
She went to the bar, ordered a glass of red wine and stood there, perfectly casually poised, watching the jazz group. They returned the favour, as did most of the men in the bar, plus the majority of the women. It took about one minute for the first man to approach her. She smiled a little, held up one hand, shook her head.
Alban tore his gaze away.
Even Haydn was looking at her. ‘Fucking hell,’ he said, ‘what a beautiful woman.’
Alban did a double take, then returned his gaze to the woman at the bar. The first rebuffed guy returned to his seat, rejected but still looking happy, almost blessed. Alban thought about taking a crack himself. Hell, he was currently uncommitted, she was stunningly beautiful, and the fact she’d probably say no was almost irrelevant. Because you never knew. Damn it, it would more or less be rude not to. But he’d be abandoning Haydn, even if only briefly, symbolically. That wouldn’t be too polite.
Alban leaned over to Haydn, not taking his eyes off the beauty at the bar. ‘Would you mind terribly if I—’
‘Oh, God,’ Haydn said. ‘Will you just control yourself? Just because you’ve admitted you’ve sucked another man’s penis that doesn’t mean you have to over-compensate by throwing yourself at the first unobtainable woman who drifts into view.’
Alban glanced. ‘You don’t know she’s unobtainable.’
‘Oh, get real,’ Haydn breathed. He looked round, sighing. ‘Do you think they’re actually going to serve us at any point?’
‘But you wouldn’t mind? I mean, you’re right, I’ll probably be straight back, but—’
‘Can’t you just leave her alone? That woman probably spends her entire life batting away guys like you. Completely fed up with it, I’d bet. Give her a break.’
‘Oh; there goes another one,’ Alban said, as a second man left his table and went up to her. She turned him away gracefully, too. Alban looked at Haydn. ‘Look, it’s paying her a compliment. And the fact she has to do it all the time just means she has lots of practice; water off a duck’s back.’
‘Alban, you’ve said yourself she’ll almost certainly turn you down, so why bother?’
Alban was still drinking her in. She was looking round the room, sipping from her glass, face currently turning away from him. Alban adjusted his chair a quarter-turn to get a better look at her without cricking his neck. ‘You’re missing the point,’ he told Haydn. ‘Even if the chance is one in a thousand or one in a million, she might say yes. And what have I got to lose?’
‘Your dignity?’ Haydn suggested. ‘You’ll be humiliated.’
‘It’s just a knock-back, Haydn. It’s not the end of the fucking world. And do you know what?’ He turned back to look at his cousin, who made a resigned, What? kind of face. ‘That woman,’ Alban said, ‘is so beautiful it will still be a positive experience. It’ll be a privilege to exchange even just a few words with her; a fucking honour to be knocked back by a creature that stunning.’ He nodded for emphasis and tapped on the table with one middle finger just in case there was any remaining shred of doubt regarding the matter. ‘I’m perfectly serious.’
‘Yes, I’m somewhat gathering that,’ Haydn said.
Alban looked back at the woman. Her gaze swept round their end of the room, hesitated on him, producing a brief, uncertain smile, then went on. Whereupon she turned back to watch the jazz band.
Alban felt himself do a kind of internal reality check, assuring himself as well as he could that what seemed to have just happened, actually had.
Then he breathed, ‘Did you see that?’
‘I think I did,’ Haydn said, voice also hushed.
‘That was directed at me, not you, wasn’t it?’ Alban said. He glanced behind them. Of course there wasn’t anybody else behind them; there was just the brick wall.
‘It certainly wasn’t directed at me,’ Haydn said.
‘Well, fuck it; that’s that,’ Alban said, standing. He made his way to the bar.
‘Best of luck,’ Haydn whispered.
She was called Kalpana. She was some astounding combination of north Indian, Sri Lankan, Native American and Japanese - a mixture of ethnic cues in the bone structure and surface textures of her face that defied any easy racial stereotyping. Planet beautiful; basically that was where she was from. Her hair was the colour of copper beech, her skin like velvet, a moleskin softness somewhere between pearly grey and the brown of a polished conker. Her eyes were hazel, heavily flecked with green. And she moved like she wasn’t made from the ordinary stuff of common-or-garden humanity; she moved like she was made of some exotic matter from a dimension composed exclusively of pure sexual radiance, like she came from another universe, an existence where the usual clunky physical laws that governed movement and the getting of clumps of matter from one place to another simply didn’t apply. Fuck me sideways, she’s the luxury edition, Alban thought, watching her rear as she swivelled and stepped her way between the tables, heading for the one by the wall where Haydn Wopuld was staring goggle-eyed at her.
Alban felt the gaze of a very large proportion of the clientele on him as he escorted her away from the bar. He felt himself blush. This was crazy; he was more embarrassed to have succeeded in gaining her attention than he would have been to have got knocked back like the other two guys, which really had been entirely what he’d been expecting, right up until that hesitating glance and that tiny, slightly confused-looking smile. Hell’s teeth; even after it.
‘Kalpana, this is my cousin Haydn,’ he said, pulling out a seat for her.
‘Pleased to meet you,’ she said, holding out her hand before she sat down. Her voice was soft and made Haydn think of an otter sleekly slipping without a ripple into a sunny brook. He shut his mouth, blinked and then finally got round to shaking her hand. He didn’t quite achieve anything intelligible by way of greeting, but made instead a sort of gagging, gargling noise which would have to suffice.
She sat. If a chair could faint with pleasure, Alban thought, that one would have.
Alban sat, too, looking from Haydn to Kalpana. ‘There’s an explanation, ’ he explained.
‘There is?’ Haydn squeaked.
Alban nodded. ‘We know each other.’
‘You do?’ Haydn said, ‘and you forgot?’
‘Your cousin was very drunk,’ Kalpana said, smiling. A waiter materialised and took their order. Alban suggested only the best champagne in the p
lace would do, and nobody disagreed.
‘Mumbai,’ Alban said to Haydn while looking at Kalpana.
‘I’m a journalist,’ she told Haydn. ‘I was writing an article about the politics of games. Alban gave me an interview.’
‘Did we prearrange this interview?’ Alban asked. ‘And I turned up drunk? I’m never normally that unprofessional.’
‘We hadn’t arranged anything. You rather insisted on giving me the interview. I’d already talked to . . . One of your uncles, I think. It was my belief at the time that I already had what I needed. You begged to differ.’
‘Oh dear,’ Alban said. ‘Sorry.’
‘That’s quite all right. You were very funny.’
Alban narrowed his eyes. ‘Did I in any way try it on with you?’
‘Yes, you most certainly did.’ She smiled broadly, displaying perfect teeth. ‘That was funny, too.’
She had been here for a year, writing about Paris and the French and sometimes covering the European Parliament for a variety of Indian magazines and newspapers. She could write in Japanese, too, with care and a good dictionary, and sometimes sold stuff to Japanese publications. She was leaving Paris in a couple of days, to go back to India to be married. To a very sweet American. They would live near Seattle, looking out over the Sound. She was kind of wandering round the city over these last few days, saying goodbye to places she had good memories of, sometimes with friends, sometimes alone.
The champagne arrived. They toasted her forthcoming marriage.
They dropped off a happy, tipsy Haydn at the Ritz. Alban was staying at the George V. Her apartment was in Belleville; she’d take the cab on to there.
At his hotel, the doorman opened the taxi door for Alban, who turned to Kalpana on the seat beside him and smiled, holding out his hand. ‘Kalpana,’ he said, ‘it’s been an absolute pleasure.’
She was staring straight ahead, not looking at him. She seemed to have sucked her lips right into her mouth. She looked down at his offered hand, then out at the waiting doorman.
Finally, she looked into his eyes. She took his hand in both of hers. ‘Listen,’ she began, then sucked air through her teeth, leaned forward and addressed the doorman. ‘Pardon, monsieur.’
‘Pas de problème, madame,’ Alban heard the man say.
She was still looking into his eyes. He saw her swallow. ‘Ah,’ she said. She swallowed again. ‘This is - that is, I’d never - oh dear. Ah - if, ah . . .’ She squeezed his hand.
He lifted his left hand and touched it very gently to her lips. ‘Kalpana, whatever it is you’re even thinking of suggesting, it’s going to be perfect by me.’
She smiled, then looked down and sat back, still smiling. He pulled his hand gently away, took out his wallet and handed a large note to the doorman, who grinned, might even have winked, and shut the taxi door again, giving the roof a quick double slap.
He never saw her again, never even tried to contact her - they’d agreed they never would - and he had always assumed that she went on to marry her nice, unutterably lucky American guy and live happily in Washington State for what he hoped would be the rest of a long and exquisitely happy life, but the next evening, after they’d said goodbye, while he was in the taxi being driven away from her apartment, he thought, That was probably the best eighteen hours I’ll ever spend in my entire life. This did not in any way make him sad.
He supposed not having to use condoms might have made it even better, but then that was just the way things had to be. Nothing else he could think of could have made the experience any better at all.
He saw Haydn once more before he left Paris; they stood in Notre-Dame soaking up the echoes, rode the Métro and had a wander round Montmartre, a district Alban had always rather dismissed as too touristy but discovered that day he quite liked. They sat on the steps at Sacré Coeur, eating ice creams.
‘I bet you’re going to find you’re just not looking at it the right way,’ Alban told Haydn.
‘You think so?’ Haydn was sitting forward, legs splayed, holding his tie back with one hand so that his ice cream wouldn’t stain anything.
Alban lounged, stretched back, watching sunlit girls and licking lasciviously. ‘Yeah. I knew this guy once who had the neatest, cleanest office you’ve ever seen; real place-for-everything fixation. You know those tiny hand-held vacuum gadgets you get for keyboards? He had two - in case one broke down. The thing was, he hated anything being out of place, even momentarily. He wanted his office so neat and tidy he couldn’t actually do any work in it; he’d convinced himself he’d brought it to such a peak of perfect tidiness even opening a drawer would spoil it. It was like the place was frozen. He wouldn’t even have a litter bin in it because that was like some polluting hole of untidiness in itself.’
Alban looked at Haydn, but he wasn’t responding, just frowning at his ice cream.
‘But the litter bin was the key. I told him, Have a fucking litter bin; it’s the sacrificial anode, the mousetrap; where all the untidiness gets sucked away to. In the bin, it’s all chaos and no ordering is needed, in fact any attempt to organise it misunderstands its function. ’
Haydn still wasn’t replying, but he seemed to be listening.
‘It’s like a good filing system always has a Miscellaneous section,’ Alban said. ‘It’s not a failure to have some things that can’t be filed in exactly the right file, it’s just acknowledging something about how things work in the real world. That’s what Miscellaneous is for and the alternative isn’t more accuracy, it’s less, because you end up overstretching definitions or creating a fresh file for every single thing, each unit, and that’s not filing, that’s naming. Miscellaneous is the definition that makes sense of all the others. In the same way, a litter bin is the heart of tidiness.’
He went back to licking his ice cream. Haydn looked round at him, still keeping his tie pressed close to his chest. ‘Did it work?’ he asked. ‘This incisive piece of analysis. Did your friend see the light and become once again a happy, productive cog in the office machine?’
Alban had to decide quickly - he’d been making the whole thing up - so he did and said, ‘Yeah.’ He was wearing a pair of dark glasses, and he lifted them over his eyes for a moment to smile out at Haydn. ‘Yes, it did. Good, eh?’ He put the glasses back again.
Haydn had looked unconvinced, at the time.
A week later, though, he was back in London. Alban got some of the credit for this. Personally he thought the guy had just needed a holiday.
‘Hmm. So, Alban, are you still a champagne socialist?’ Kennard asks.
They are at dinner in Fielding’s parents’ place in Malison Street: Kennard and Renée playing host to Alban and Fielding (Haydn’s here too, but then he still lives at home). Nina - Fielding’s partner - was invited but she has some class she has to attend this evening. Probably Mayan Astrology for Cats or something. She and Fielding live in Islington.
Fielding’s got Alban to wear an old suit of his. Al’s scrubbed up all right, really, though patently a tie was too much to hope for. This champagne socialist stuff strikes Fielding as a load of crap. Alban, when he worked for the firm, took his yearly bonus and company car. Chopping down trees doesn’t make you a leftie, and now he just seems to like playing at being poor.
Al glances at his glass of Aussie Shiraz (trust Dad, Fielding thinks, to ask over the wrong drink).
‘I used to be a champagne socialist,’ Al says.
‘So.’ Kennard’s eyebrows rise. ‘You mean you’re not any more?’
‘No,’ Alban says. ‘I’m older now. I’m a vintage champagne socialist.’ He raises the glass. ‘Cheers.’
Kennard blinks. Haydn smiles.
‘So, where are you working at the moment, Alban?’ Renée asks. Over the years, Kennard’s wife has slowly developed the skills required to cover for her husband’s mistakes, gaffes and stumped silences.
‘I’m not, Renée,’ Alban tells her. ‘I’m unemployed.’
‘Between j
obs,’ Kennard says, nodding. ‘Hmm.’ Kennard is not long turned sixty-two, though he seems somewhat older. He has put on some weight over the last year, lost the remains of his hair and developed impressive if at the same time rather offputting jowls. Remarkably bad teeth. He’s company Managing Director, which sounds quite impressive. He is oddly good at talking to small children and politicians.
‘Between jobs,’ Alban agrees.
‘And are you seeing anyone at the moment?’ Renée asks Alban. Fielding’s mother is quite slight.
‘Not really,’ he says. He catches Fielding looking at him.
‘Ah, hah,’ Kennard says.
‘Alban’s got a very bonnie lassie in Glasgow,’ Fielding tells them. ‘She’s a mathematician. A professor.’
‘A what, dear?’
‘A professor.’
‘Oh. That was what you said.’
‘She’s a professor of mathematics,’ Fielding tells her, just so there’s no doubt about it.
‘Really?’ Renée says.
‘Dark horse,’ Kennard tells nobody in particular.
Renée looks impressed. She turns from Fielding to Alban. ‘And will you be bringing her to the bash at Garbadale?’
‘She might give me a lift there, but she won’t be staying,’ Alban tells Renée. ‘She may go off and climb some mountains.’
‘Climb mountains?’ Renée looks astonished.
‘Oh, yes, Garbadale,’ Kennard says, as though just remembering they’re all supposed to reconvene there in about ten days’ time. Which is not impossible.
‘She climbs mountains?’ Renée says. ‘And she’s a professor?’ She pauses, then laughs that shrill laugh of hers, hand in front of her face. ‘She sounds like a man!’ She looks at Haydn. ‘Haydn. Don’t you think? She sounds like a man!’
‘I couldn’t possibly say, Mother,’ Haydn says, and looks at Al with a tiny shake of the head as though apologising for Renée.