The Steep Approach to Garbadale

by Iain Banks

  ‘Climbs mountains, eh?’ Kennard says. ‘Hmm, there’s a thing.’

  This torture only lasts another hour or so and then they’re free to follow Kennard upstairs to the loft and his train set and get some talking and persuading done.

  ‘Alban thinks, as I do, that we should keep the family and the firm together,’ Fielding tells Kennard. He glances over at Al, who is still looking out over the train set. The display is at waist level, mounted on a stout base of two-by-fours. It fills most of the loft, with a central spine of forested hills and alpine-looking mountains made from papier mâché dominating the centre. The mountains are riddled with tunnels and the peaks of the higher ones come within a half-metre of the inverted V of the loft’s ceiling. ‘That’s a fair enough thing to say, isn’t it, Alban?’

  ‘If it was up to me alone, I wouldn’t sell to Spraint Corp,’ Alban agrees.

  ‘Dare say you’d rather have a workers’ cooperative, wouldn’t you, Alban?’ Kennard says. ‘Hmm?’ He’s cleaning the underside of one of the locomotives with a small paintbrush.

  ‘Chance would be a fine thing, Kennard,’ Al says. He sees a little switch on the edge of the layout. ‘What happens if you flick this?’ he says, pointing.

  Kennard looks over. ‘Try it and see.’

  Alban flicks the switch. A little cable car starts to whirr its way from the station at the foot of the layout’s central mountain and make its way towards the summit, a good couple of metres higher. ‘Ah ha,’ he says. He folds his arms, inspects the rest of the layout.

  Kennard turns another control and a one-carriage funicular train begins to click its way up a cogged track set at forty-five degrees on an only slightly smaller mountain. Meanwhile a couple of other trains - a TEE and a mixed goods - whirr round and round the whole layout, contra-rotating.

  Fielding can remember when Kennard was still building all this. He’s never seen his father happier or more energised. The layout has essentially stayed the same for the last fifteen years or more, and is still the one place Kennard seems to be truly at home and relaxed. It was important they were here, in this place, to be able to talk to him like this.

  ‘We both think it would be a terrible waste, and a shame, if we sold up to Spraint,’ Fielding tells Kennard. ‘After everything that Henry built up, and Bert and Win continued and built upon, it would be an act of vandalism to tear it all down.’

  ‘Wouldn’t really be tearing it down, would it?’ Kennard asks, holding the loco up to the light on its back, almost tenderly. There are strip lights fastened to the underside of the roof trusses all over the loft.

  ‘It would be tearing us away from our heritage, Daddy,’ Fielding tells him. ‘Spraint will be able to do what they want with the game and you have to assume having paid good money for our name they’ll try to make it all work, but it still might not. These things just don’t, not always. What is certain is that we’ll be separated from the one thing that’s made us who we are as a family for the last century and a quarter. I know this matters to you, Daddy. I don’t want us all to sleepwalk into something we’ll regret later. I just want you to think about it.’ Fielding looks at Alban. ‘We both do.’

  Almost miraculously, Al plays along. ‘It is a crunch point,’ he says. ‘Once it’s done, that’s it.’

  ‘So we all need to think,’ Fielding says. ‘It’s not just us - it’s everybody, Daddy.’

  ‘I have shares, too,’ Haydn says. He’s here, though sat in a small chair in one corner, reading a book.

  ‘They all count,’ Fielding agrees. He looks at Haydn. ‘You’re still a Don’t Know, aren’t you, Haydn?’

  ‘No, I’m a Not Telling You.’ Haydn looks up briefly and blinks at them. ‘Though Spraint have said they want me to stay on in charge of production, if they do take over.’ He looks down to his book again. ‘Mind you,’ he mutters, ‘the word they used was “when”.’

  ‘We can’t just let them roll over us like this, Daddy,’ Fielding tells Kennard.

  Kennard puts the loco carefully back on the outermost track, then bends and - using a little jeweller’s screwdriver - hooks the engine up to its train of carriages. ‘Have to put up a fight, eh?’ he says.

  ‘I think we must,’ Fielding tells him. He waves at the whole layout. ‘Otherwise it’s just destroying everything we’ve spent so long building up.’

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘So,’ Fielding says. ‘What do you think, Kennard?’

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Which way do you think you might vote, Daddy?’ Fielding hasn’t dared ask his father so directly before, and Kennard has never volunteered any sign at all. This is a man who abstained in the vote on the 25-per-cent sale to Spraint back in ’99. Fielding honestly has no idea what he’ll say.

  ‘Hmm.’ Kennard squints at the top of the layout’s highest mountain, where the tiny cable car has just snicked home into the summit station. ‘Think about it,’ he says. He looks at Fielding, then at Alban. ‘You both say No, hmm?’

  ‘That’s right, Daddy.’

  Al just nods.

  ‘Hmm.’

  ‘In a way, none of this is real.’

  Sophie turned in his arms, looked into his eyes. ‘What do you mean?’

  He waved his free hand around. ‘That cliff face, this soil, these rhodies. None of this belongs here.’

  She turned on to her front, put her chin in one hand. ‘How come?’

  ‘Old Henry, the great, mythical great-grandfather, our glorious founder, he brought all the rocks and the soil and the plants from Scotland, from Garbadale. You been there?’

  ‘Uh-huh. Just once. Rained a lot.’

  ‘Yeah. Anyway, I’ve looked it up. It was 1903. He had thousands of tons of rock quarried out of a mountain near the big house there and shipped to Bristol, then smaller boats brought it along the coast to a special pier they had built down by the river, then traction engines hauled it all up to here. That’s when the ford in the river at the bottom of the garden dates from.’

  ‘The rock was brought from Scotland?’ She was playing with a long lock of her red hair, shining in a stray beam of sunlight finding its way through the enveloping canopy of broad, dark leaves. She wound the hair round her index finger, let it unwind again. ‘Why?’

  Alban shrugged. ‘Because he could. There’s rock like this everywhere; loads on Exmoor. He just wanted this stuff from Garbadale called Durness limestone, wanted it here. Had it made into that little cliff, right there.’

  She turned and looked at the low cliff of great, slabby rocks which was visible beyond the western limit of the giant rhododendron bush they were lying inside. A breeze disturbed the ragged umbrella of leaves around them.

  They had been here about ten minutes, kissing and caressing each other, though not yet to any sort of climax. They did that sometimes - just pulled away a little, took time off to talk, get their breath back, before they started again and, usually, brought each other to orgasm with their fingers. She had taken him in her mouth once, in a bedroom at a friend’s party in Minehead a few days earlier, but he’d thrust too eagerly, making her gag, and she hadn’t wanted to repeat the experience.

  This would be their last week together; the summer holiday was near its end and they’d both be heading off to school soon, him back in London.

  The beam of sunlight striking her hair disappeared as clouds covered the sun, and the broad tent of cover under the spreading branches became a little darker.

  They talked a lot, too, about the mess the world was in, about music they loved and hated, about how they’d organise things with their parents so they could see each other again soon and, frequently, about TV programmes and films, about war and famine, about what they expected to do with their lives - careers, ambitions - and about whether they wanted children. Sometimes they both assumed they’d be together for the rest of their lives, and get married, or not, and have lots of children, or at least two. Other times they talked in a way that tacitly acknowledged they would never be more
than cousins who’d had an adolescent sort of affair, and would meet up at family events in the future - weddings, funerals, big birthdays - probably each with their own partners and children, sharing a conspiratorial look and a smile across a crowded room and maybe having just one dance together, holding each other, discreetly remembering.

  They didn’t know. They could not be sure, not even of themselves, and playing it out by talking about it was the only way they had to deal with the uncertainties.

  ‘He brought the soil from Garbadale, too, same way,’ Alban told her. She was sitting up now, peering through the green gloom at the convincing-looking cliff. They both wore jeans; his T-shirt was the best they could do for a blanket. She still wore her blouse, though he’d undone the buttons and it was hanging open at the front. He knelt behind her, putting his hands to her breasts and cupping them, then nuzzling his nose through the dark, fragrant mass of her hair and kissing the nape of her neck. She pressed back against him.

  ‘Why bring the soil?’ she asked. He bit her neck very gently and she shuddered.

  ‘That made a bit more sense; lots of peat in it - very acidic. Let them grow different types of plants.’ He ran his open mouth down to her shoulder, tips of his teeth leaving faint red marks on her skin. He pulled back to get some of her hair out of his mouth. ‘Plenty of peat on Exmoor, too, though. Must have—’

  ‘Do that again,’ she said.

  He did that again.

  After a while she rose back up against him and then turned so that they were kneeling face-to-face, and kissed him very deeply for a long time, before pulling away and saying, ‘Listen; at Jill’s party the other night?’

  ‘Uh-huh?’ he said.

  ‘I bought some condoms from her.’

  His heart leapt. He stared at her. ‘You did?’ he said, uncertain. Mouth dry.

  She nodded. Her eyes looked very wide and she was still breathing hard. She quickly wiped some hair from her mouth then held his face in both her hands.

  ‘So,’ he said, then had to stop to swallow. ‘Does that mean you want to?’

  She nodded again. ‘Suppose it must.’ Her gaze searched his eyes. ‘You?’

  ‘Oh, fuck,’ he said, letting himself go partly limp, as though he was about to faint or something. ‘Sorry. Yes. Oh, yes. Come on, you know.’

  ‘I was saving them for our last day,’ she explained, talking quickly, urgently, ‘when your parents are here, but that’s mad; there’ll be more people around and anyway it’s probably when my period starts.’

  ‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Right.’

  ‘Only one problem.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I left them in the house.’ She twisted one corner of her mouth, raised both eyebrows. ‘Eek.’

  He reached for his T-shirt. ‘Where are they?’

  She put her hand on his. ‘Too long to explain. I’ll go.’

  He helped her do up the buttons on her blouse.

  ‘You sure about this?’ he asked her.

  ‘Positive.’

  ‘You’re serious?’

  ‘Yup.’

  She kissed him quickly, stood. She looked up and around in the half-light, hair swinging to and fro. ‘Raining,’ she said.

  He listened, too. He could hear a pattering noise. ‘Oh, yeah.’

  ‘Back soon.’ She pushed out of the bush. He heard her running on the brick path.

  He lay back, chest heaving. He looked up at the pattern of light and shade produced by the glimpses of grey sky and the dark underside of the broad leaves. It was finally going to happen. He sat up. Was it? What if she changed her mind? What if somebody at the house told her to do something she couldn’t get out of or made her go somewhere, or if someone had found the condoms wherever she’d stashed them, or what if it was all just a joke, and she was off to lie in a bath, or sit on a couch in the sunroom, eating chocolates, reading magazines and giggling at how she’d left him?

  He got to his feet and paced, ducking his head beneath the great bare looped branches of the bush, stepping over an exposed root. No, she wasn’t like that. Some of her friends played practical jokes on each other and teased each other all the time, but one of the things he thought was great about her was she didn’t take part in any of that. She might laugh with the others, but she didn’t like being cruel. So, she’d be back. She’d be true to her word. Maybe he should have a wank first; when they did it properly he’d probably come really quickly and that would be frustrating for her, wouldn’t it? Maybe he’d come as he - or she - put the condom on. That would be embarrassing. And a waste.

  He paced back, almost hitting his head on a branch. A few drops of rain got through the canopy of leaves and hit him on the face. It was quite dark outside now.

  He glanced at his watch. Maybe she wasn’t coming back. How long had she been gone? He ought to have looked at his watch when she’d left, but he hadn’t thought. Oh, but it might be going to happen, they might be going to do it!

  The rain came on harder.

  She wasn’t coming. She had never meant to come back. He was fooling himself. She was fooling him. He was a fool.

  He sighed and looked up, shaking his head. He listened to the rain, sounding quite loud now, all around. The temperature had dropped a little.

  Out of the sound of the rain there came the slap-slapping sound of trainers on a wet brick path. He held his breath. He heard leaves rustle nearby, but she didn’t appear.

  He was about to stick his head out of the bush, but then saw a shadow appear at the place he’d been going to push the branches aside, and she was there, wet through, hair plastered to her forehead, grinning. ‘Wrong bloody rhodie bush!’ she said. She was breathing hard. The rain-wet blouse stuck to her breasts.

  He stepped forward and took her in his arms.

  He did come too quickly. She caught her breath when he first pushed into her, though she still said it hadn’t hurt. They weren’t even sure the condom was on right because it had been reluctant to unroll, but it seemed to work. No blood, which they both thought was good. He got to see her vagina for the first time, even though everything had become very dark under the canopy of leaves. He kind of wished for a torch. She thought it was ugly but he thought it was the single most beautiful thing he had ever seen in his entire life.

  They waited, her stroking his back with her hands, listening to the rain, feeling the odd droplet hit their naked bodies. Twigs and old leaves and bits of soil, all dampened by the raindrops starting to patter through the canopy, began to stick to them. They were both beginning to feel cold. Then they did it again, using a fresh condom.

  He wanted to tell her that he loved her, but it was such a corny thing to say, and this was somehow such a corny time to say it, he didn’t. It took a bit longer this time. She came a few seconds after he did and this made him want to cry.

  They lay pressed together, holding each other in the gloom, listening to the rain.

  Two days later his mum and dad appeared for the weekend, to take him back to Richmond. They brought Grandma Win with them, though mercifully they’d left the deeply annoying Cory behind with friends.

  ‘Alban’s a prefect at school, aren’t you, darling?’ Leah said, leaning to take a mouthful of profiteroles.

  ‘Leah, please,’ Alban said. He could feel his ears going red. He took a drink of lemonade. His father laughed silently, sipped his coffee.

  ‘At her school,’ Aunt Clara said, ‘Sophie’s a monitor.’

  ‘Really?’ Grandma Win asked. ‘Isn’t that a kind of lizard?’

  Sophie’s eyes widened as she added some sugar to her coffee, but she didn’t say anything.

  Uncle James looked confused.

  Grandma Win was a tall, thin, sharp-looking lady who had what Alban’s dad called Thatcherite hair. She was fifty-nine, which was pretty ancient, obviously. She’d be sixty in a couple of months. She carried herself in a very upright, angular sort of way and always looked a little stiff. She wore large glasses with a graded shade element,
even indoors, and often wore mauve dresses and tweed twin sets. Her voice was usually soft but a little throaty, which she excused on the grounds that she still liked the occasional cigarette. It was a very English voice, which always surprised Alban because she’d lived mostly at Garbadale for twenty years now with Grandad Bert, who was much older even than Grandma Win and who’d broken his hip last year and tended to stay there at Garbadale all the time.

  ‘So, Alban,’ Grandma Win said, ‘do you play Empire! on the computer? What do you think of it?’

  Alban looked up. He glanced at his dad, then at Grandma Win. ‘Ah, no, Gran. Not really.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ she said, frowning. She looked at Andy. ‘Andrew, don’t you let the boy play?’

  ‘We’ve decided Alban can use my home word processor for writing essays and so on. In the coming academic year.’ He glanced at Leah. ‘We’d really rather he didn’t play computer games.’

  Leah nodded.

  ‘Oh, I see,’ Gran said. ‘Well, I think we have to hope that not all parents feel the same way about their precious little darlings, or we’ll be bankrupt.’ She emitted a brittle smile and leaned forward towards Alban. ‘I bet you want to play games like Empire!, though, don’t you, Alban?’

  Alban glanced at his dad, who was watching him with a look of wry amusement.

  ‘They look interesting,’ Alban said, hoping this would keep everybody happy. He went to take more lemonade but he’d drained the glass. He pretended to drink anyway, hoping nobody would notice. A last dribble. God, he’d thought that - now that he’d Done It - this sort of embarrassment would stop. He’d felt like he’d become a man two days ago, with Sophie, but nobody else seemed to have noticed any difference; they still treated him like a child. Mind you, he supposed it was for the best nobody had noticed.

  In fact, he’d already played the arcade version of Empire!, and one of his friends whose dad published a computer magazine had a Nintendo Entertainment System and a Sega Master System, and there was another version on the NES which he’d also tried. The arcade version didn’t really work because you couldn’t make a territory-capturing game fast enough to keep people coming back with more coins, though the games designers had done their best. The NES version was better and more suited to the character of the game but looked clunky, and the board game was still more satisfying. He hadn’t wanted to mention any of this in case Andy and Leah disapproved. Looking at Grandma Win, though, he had the oddest impression that she could tell all this. He’d never sat at the same table as her before, never really talked to her properly. He was starting to think she was quite a scary old woman.