by Iain Banks
‘She’s my generation, not yours.’
‘Oh, yeah. Of course. Haydn?’ Alban said.
Andy shook his head. ‘Guaranteed a job with Spraint.’ Andy looked at Alban. ‘He is our one star, you know. I wouldn’t say he’s been wasted on us, but he could easily handle a lot more. Same job, but with a wider remit, more variables, bigger numbers.’ They walked on a few more steps. ‘But that’s it, really. The rest, they’re all away doing other stuff.’
‘There’s a whole new crop of kids, though,’ Alban said.
‘Maybe, but it’s your generation has to think about them, Alban, not my lot. Fair’s fair.’
‘Just Fielding and Haydn, then.’
‘And Sophie,’ Andy said reasonably. He glanced at Alban. ‘You wouldn’t want to forget her.’
‘Oh yes, and Sophie,’ Alban agreed, oddly embarrassed. He grinned ruefully. ‘And, of course, not me.’ He thought he might as well be the one to acknowledge this.
Andy didn’t say anything for a while. ‘Well, you can’t convincingly ask people to keep the firm and the family together when you turned your back on both, Alban.’
Alban snorted. ‘Yes, well, I’m back. For now, anyway.’
Andy looked at his watch. ‘We’d better walk on if we’re going to make that train.’
They turned away from the river.
The worst of it - the worst of it initially, anyway - was not knowing how long it would be before he would see Sophie again. He felt at once bloated and empty, filled with that same mixture of anger and shame while at the same time consumed with a restlessness, an unresolved impatience, because he knew that nothing would really be settled or decided until he’d seen her again, talked to her. Even just talking over the phone would be something; it wouldn’t be perfect, it wouldn’t be enough, but it would be a start. They just needed to talk.
The trouble was he didn’t know how to get in touch with her. He wished he’d got the phone number of even just one of her friends; then they could maybe talk when she went round to their house. He tried to think of somewhere public they’d been together that she might go to again, but there was nowhere. She would be back at school now - did that help? He didn’t even know which school she went to, or he might have tried calling there.
He rang Lydcombe a few times over the following week, hoping she might answer, but it was always Clara or Uncle James. He never said anything, just put the phone down.
For all that week, he tried to answer the phone whenever it rang in the house at Richmond, running down the hall, dashing downstairs, grabbing the receiver. He was sure Sophie must be as desperate to talk to him as he was to talk to her, but it was never her.
The frustration of it all made him want to cry sometimes, but he didn’t cry; he refused to cry. He had cried that first night, lying in the Lamb Inn in Lynton, because of the suddenness of it, the sheer speed and shock of what had happened and maybe because he could hear Leah crying, but he hadn’t cried since even though he had come close, many times. Crying, he decided, would be like he was accepting something, as though he was agreeing with the family’s hysterical, punitive view of what had happened. Crying would be making himself complicit with them. Crying would be giving in.
He remembered her face, her body, the feel and smell of her; he heard her voice, repeating and repeating the humble mantras of their summer together. ‘They’ve all bloody gone!’, ‘Fell off me ’oss, didn’ I?’, ‘Blimey, Unc, I didn’t enjoy it that much.’
He kept trying Lydcombe.
The third or fourth time he got James. His uncle started yelling as soon as Alban failed to speak after James recited the number, shouting that he was going to call the police. Alban put the phone down quickly, wondering if James had guessed it was him rather than just some crank caller.
He began to think about going back to Somerset and finding her. That might be the best bet. He had saved up nearly thirty pounds in cash; that would easily buy a return by train to Bridgwater, and then he could get a bus or hitch. Maybe he could play truant, or somehow get enough time off school without Andy and Leah knowing, or get one of his friends to lie about something they just had to go to so that he could be excused a Saturday at the charity shop and escape for long enough.
He tried phoning again the next day from a call box. He got an answering machine.
It didn’t matter. He could make the journey. The doing of it, the hardship, the danger of discovery or possible failure would be the proof of how much he loved her. She would know then how he felt about her, but then she probably already did, even though they’d never dare use the word itself. But, almost as importantly, they would know: her parents, Grandma Win, Leah and Andy - all of them. They would see how serious he was, how serious they were. They might start to understand.
He would do it. He would go.
That evening, over dinner, his dad mentioned - casually, more to Leah than Alban - that Sophie wasn’t at Lydcombe any more. She’d gone to school in Madrid and would probably be there until next summer, spending Christmas in Spain.
Alban spent a long time looking at his plate, unable to move or think.
‘Are you all right, darling?’ Leah said.
He had to ask to be excused.
Sitting on his bed, breathing hard, hands on his knees, staring at the carpet in his room, he came extremely close indeed to crying - he could feel the tickle behind his nose, and the very start of the tears welling up behind his eyes - but still he refused to let the tears come.
No crying, not even now. There would still be a way.
The year went on. His sixteenth birthday came and went. He was allowed a party at the house, but his parents were there the whole time. School was all right. According to a couple of the other boys, he wasn’t the only one who’d popped his cherry over the summer, though he’d listened to the accompanying stories and hadn’t found the details convincing. He’d refused to speak about his own experiences. He’d developed a way of just smiling when people asked him about it. Half the boys thought he was trying to bluff, the others thought he must indeed have Done It.
Colder weather came in. He lay awake one night, still trying to think up ways of getting to Sophie, about getting to Spain himself or just finding out how to phone her.
An alarm sounded in the street outside. Car or house, he couldn’t tell. He should be trying to get to sleep; it was a busy day at school tomorrow. He thought ahead, reviewing all the stuff he had to do, making up a mental list of the books and pieces of kit he’d need for the whole, complicated school day and checking each item off in his head, knowing they were all already packed or easily to hand and obvious.
The alarm was really annoying, going on and on, same two stupid high-pitched tones warbling away, minute after minute after minute.
He had to get to her. But what could he do? He couldn’t go there. It was too far, too foreign; he didn’t even have his own passport yet. Had they sent her away to Spain because of what had happened? That was crazy, that was over-reacting, wasn’t it? Phoning was the only possibility, or maybe writing her a letter if he could get the address. He’d tried rifling through Leah and Andy’s desks (guiltily but determined), searching for a number or address that might help. He’d hoped they might have the address of Sophie’s biological mother in Spain, but there was nothing.
The alarm wailed on, relentless, inconsolable.
Would there be anybody else in the family who might know anything? Maybe somebody his own age - Sophie’s age - who might understand?
Cousin Haydn? He was just a year younger than him and Sophie. But he was a shy little fat kid - Alban found it hard to believe he’d know anything.
The alarm, or a nightmare, had woken Cory; he could hear her wailing from her room, then the distant sound of Leah getting up to go through to her.
Uncle Graeme and Aunt Lauren’s children? Cousin Fabiole? Cousin Lori? Fab was eighteen, so maybe too old to understand. Lori: she was the same age as him, wasn’t she?
; He didn’t think they’d been especially close to Sophie either, but he was prepared to try anything.
The alarm went on and on and on and on and on and on . . .
He turned over in his bed, then turned back again. He’d already wanked, hiding the tissue under his bed. Maybe he should have another go. It would help pass the time; might even let him get to sleep. This fucking alarm was really doing his head in. He tried putting his head under the pillow and cramming the pillow down over his ear, and that sort of helped, but he could still hear the alarm.
‘Fuck it,’ he muttered. He pushed the pillow away and threw the duvet off, crossed to the window and opened it to the first notch, letting cold air spill in and the alarm sound still louder. Something about attack being the best form of defence. Confront the damned thing, show it you weren’t afraid of it. This was nonsense, obviously, but he felt it was important somehow.
He went back to bed and went on thinking about how he might get to Sophie, or get to write to her or phone her; somehow speak to her.
It went round and round in his head while the alarm went on and on outside. It would be all right. It was possible. It looked impossible but it wasn’t, it couldn’t be. Sophie was probably trying just as hard wherever she was to think of ways of getting to him. He was here and she was in Spain or wherever, but they were still together. They would always be together.
It was getting cold in the room; he could feel it on his face. He got up and closed the window. The alarm continued to sound, but it was as though it had been going on so long now that his brain was somehow cancelling it out. He remembered something similar from biology or physiology, about how the nose could only smell fresh smells - it then sort of got bored with the smell and stopped smelling it even though it was still there.
It would be all right. Somehow, it would work out. He knew it would. He would think of Sophie and go to sleep thinking about her and so dream about her. He kept trying to do this.
The alarm cut off eventually, leaving something more than sudden silence.
He could still hear it.
The alarm had stopped, the noise was no more, but he could still hear it. Whatever part of his brain had cancelled out the sound was now creating precisely the disturbance it had sought to negate.
He lay there and he listened to the ghost sound, hearing with the utmost clarity the thing that simply was not there any more, and that was when he started to cry.
He buried his head in his pillow so nobody else would hear and wept on into the night in terrible, body-spasming sobs; desolate, heartbroken, in mourning for all that was lost.
He meets VG in Shanghai in ninety-nine, in a big hotel which is just one of several attached to a conference centre and mall complex it is bizarrely difficult to get out of. He’s there for a games and toys trade fair. She’s there for a conference. He’s been vaguely aware for the last few days that there are other groups of people wandering around the place who obviously aren’t part of the trade fair and don’t quite look like normal business people or tourists either. A sign propped in a lobby spells out in gold letters: Welcome To The 23rd Desitter Mathematical Conference. Mathematicians, then. A high proportion of them are people one might charitably call Characters.
He’s there with Fielding. His cousin has cut back quite severely on his drug-taking in the two years since the fun and games in Singapore, and so, he supposes, has he. They don’t have any with them here, anyway. Fielding has talked about getting some locally, but it’s probably just bravado.
Alban’s up relatively early one morning after a late meal with some overenthusiastic production people from Pudong and an uneasy night’s sleep interrupted by indigestion. Awake at five, he never really got back to sleep, so he’s had a very early breakfast. Now his rhythms will be all messed up, as though they weren’t a bit fucked just because of the jet lag. He’s getting heartily fed up with all this travelling and schmoozing and partying and forced sociability. It suits some people down to the ground - Fielding just loves all this networking stuff, treats it as really important and fulfilling - but he’s finding it wearing. He’s just not cut out for it. It’s early 1999, he’s not even thirty, yet he feels old and jaded and fed up with what ought to be a great job. There’s been a modest reorganisation within the firm and he’s officially now responsible for Product Development, though in practice his brief runs a lot wider than that and he can meddle with impunity and indeed matriarchal blessing in almost any area of the firm he wants to. To the delight and pleasure of his peers and colleagues, obviously.
Grandma Winifred is entirely in charge of the firm now. She still stays at Garbadale most of the time, but she visits the London office four or so times per year and has even been known to come on jaunts like this one.
Alban’s breakfast was relatively light and he thinks about taking a walk before the first meeting he has scheduled. Only it was raining when he looked out the window when he first got up; a hazy, low-cloud kind of rain he’s come to associate mostly with South-East Asia (which he supposes this isn’t, but still). He feels he hasn’t really been to Shanghai yet, even though he’s here. The night of the day they arrived they had a guided bus tour through what’s left of the old city and along the Bund and round a couple of very large building sites and past some spectacularly unironic buildings, including the famous Oriental Pearl TV Tower. ‘It looks like a spaceship that’s just landed,’ Fielding said, impressed. ‘Or the biggest Van de Graaff generator in all the world,’ Alban suggested, craning his neck to take in the great globular lattice.
He’s walking through the lobby and then along a promising-looking corridor, searching for an outside window to check on the weather situation, thinking maybe he’ll go back to his room, brush teeth etc. and order a cab, but then he discovers another part of the conference centre and another corridor. There’s still no outside perspective on the weather, though he thinks he hears pattering noises coming from a series of what certainly look like - unhelpfully opaque - skylights. Then he sees a noticeboard outside a smallish conference room saying somebody’s going to be reading a paper on Game Theory here in - he checks his watch - five minutes. It’s a Desitter thing; the Maths Conference. Open session - all welcome.
Game Theory. Maybe he should check this out. Hell’s teeth, these guys start early though. The room could hold about a hundred. Less than twenty seats are taken, all near the front. The people look fairly normal. Maybe a bit too lively for eight in the morning.
He goes in, staying near the back in case he needs to leave because he gets bored and/or starts to fall asleep. He’s also very slightly worried that they might instantly see that he’s an interloper and all point and scream at him or something or anyway turf him out, so staying near the exit seems like a good idea. He sits two seats in from the aisle itself, so as not to look too primed for a hair-trigger scarper, but is prepared to move if somebody blocks his getaway route.
The room fills to about half-capacity and starts to smell of coffee as people bring paper cups of the stuff in with them. A girl - no, a woman . . . No, maybe you would call her a girl - anyway, this female with blonde spiky hair and dressed in what looks like a black business suit but with no tie sits down on the very end seat two rows down. He’s confused. She does not look like a mathematician. The black-and-white look is perplexing, too. But for the fact he hasn’t seen any Caucasian help around, he’d probably assume she was a waitress. Only she doesn’t look like a waitress either. Mind you, her shoes are sensible shoes, like somebody would wear who had to stand a lot. She has a broad, vaguely Slavic face and looks a bit bleary-eyed. As though hearing him think, she pulls out some dark glasses and puts them on with the sort of deliberation he’s come to associate with either fragility or morning-after drunkenness.
She has a great face. And for some reason, he really likes the way she sits. Which is a weird thing to pick up on, he tells himself. She puts an arm out along the top of the seat next to her - towards him, though he’s pretty certain this is a coinc
idence, because after all she’s on the end of the row and there’s no chair in the other direction. Her fingers drum slowly on top of the seat. She crosses one foot up on to her opposite knee, the way women don’t. Maybe she’s a man! Definite breasts, no discernible Adam’s apple . . . Not that these things mean much these days . . . No, he can’t believe she’s not a woman. Not his type, of course - too lean and angular and blonde and not really curvy enough - but interesting; definitely interesting.
She takes out a bulky-looking mobile. It’s more of a PDA; or one of these spiffing new BlackBerrys, perhaps - he can’t quite see. She pushes her dark glasses up on to her spiky blonde hair, checks messages briefly, presses a few more buttons then returns the machine to an inside jacket pocket and her glasses to their place over her eyes. He wonders if he should say something to her. He has a sudden micro-fantasy of her falling asleep during the thing on Game Theory and him accidentally-on-purpose knocking her seat at the end and her waking up and there’d be some Bottom-like moment when she falls for the first thing or person or whatever she sees when she wakes up, or she’d realise he’d woken her deliberately and be grateful and offer to buy him a coffee to say thank you or something.
All highly fucking likely.
No, they’ll never speak, never meet - she may not even speak English, and aside from French he’s barely functional - they’ll sit here a metre and a bit away from each other for an hour or so and that will be that. They’ll go their separate ways, never knowing whether they might have been friends or lovers or business partners or a casual shag for each other, however rubbish or sublime (he still thinks of Paris, of Kalpana, and knows with a strange certainty that will remain his most sublime one-night encounter). There must be hundreds of people you almost meet, perhaps thousands, and you’ll just never know what might have happened. You might have been seconds, a metre, a word away from the true love of your life, and you’d never know.