by Iain Banks
He’d talked to Neil McBride but the estate manager had been unwilling to do anything about it; it was a family matter. He’d mentioned it to Grandma Win, but she insisted the coat had to remain where it was and hinted, round-aboutly, that her late husband Bert had wanted it to stay there. It had been his favourite old coat, then one of the boys’, and it was in Bert’s memory as well as Irene’s that it hung there in the cloakroom.
He hadn’t cared. He didn’t care. He’d stopped off at Garbadale while on a motorbike tour of the Highlands, he’d taken the coat, wrapped it up around a boulder from the shore, got a boat from the boathouse and come down here, out of sight in the dying, gloaming light and burned the fucking thing. His mother. His choice. If they really were upset, well tough; it was done.
Some sodden, flameless rags remained, barely floating. He ran the boat over them a few more times, until there was almost nothing left to see, then turned the bows of the boat to the north-west and the house, opening the engine up and sitting back, breathing hard, the tears drying on his cheeks in the created breeze of the boat’s slipstream.
‘All Bran!’
‘Yo, big man, feck me, you’re lookin smert! Fucken hell, wid ye take a look at yon! Fucken hell!’
‘Big Al! How’re ye doin?’
‘Evening all.’
He’s back in Perth, at Tango’s old flat, order restored, door renewed after the attentions of the police battering ram, Council apparently mollified, rent and bills being paid off and life largely back to normal.
‘Take a seat, Al, go on; take a seat. Shone; shift up ya ignorant bam. There. So, big man, how’s it hingin?’
‘I’m good. How’s everybody?’
Pleasantries are exchanged. The living room is fairly crowded and smoky, the coffee table jammed with cans, bottles, ashtrays and mugs. Alban knows six of the eight people present and recognises the other two, one of whom is a large lady sporting a black eye. He can hear children yelling in another part of the flat. ‘I was just thinkin about doin a giant-size Slurry fur the assembled party,’ Tango explains. ‘Utilising a couple of tins of the mulligatawny donated by your man Burb here. You in?’
Alban grins. ‘Tempting as ever, especially with the spicy soup, obviously; however I was thinking of treating us all to a meal and it was a curry I was thinking of.’
‘You flush, Al?’
‘As a freshly planed piece of inlay.’
‘Whit?’ says Shone.
‘Curry it is then.’
A takeaway is decided upon, not everybody wanting to have to go out to eat. A large order is placed by phone. Al helps with some tea-making in the kitchen, stepping over the dogs and two unidentified children conducting a game which seems to consist entirely of being chased and screaming a lot.
‘Good tae see ye, Al.’
‘You too, Tango.’
‘Al, awfy sorry, but I still canny offer ye your room back. It’s just big Mifty had a bit of a contretemps with her man and—’
‘No problem, Tango; staying at a hotel.’ He looks in the fridge. ‘Need more milk. I’ll nip down to the shop.’
‘Shite,’ Tango says, nudging a passing child with one knee. ‘You been pouring the milk down the toilet again?’ Children squeal, disappear.
‘Tango,’ Alban asks, drying his hands on a towel, ‘you said some of my stuff reappeared?’
‘Aye, like ah said on the phone; fucken miracle, but it did. Out here. In the cupboard.’ The big black plastic bag falls out of the hall cupboard as the door opens. ‘No actual pack, of course - tolt you that cop fancied it - but they sent you all this lot back.’
Alban takes a quick look inside. ‘Right. I’ll just leave it here for now, pick it up before I head back to the hotel.’
‘Dinnae forget now.’
‘I won’t.’
The takeaway is delivered; they eat most of it and some is saved for the next day. Tango makes burgers and chips for the children. Cans are drunk, vodka bottles are opened, joints smoked. Deedee admits that he doesn’t actually like Tango’s Slurry. Tango is horrified. ‘But it’s my signature dish!’
A heated debate ensues regarding the relative merits of Smash and Mr Mash, the latter finally coming out on top in a vote - despite Tango’s howls of protest - largely due to the shape of the pack making it easier to conceal about one’s person whilst departing from your average retail outlet without the monetary side of said purchase technically having been completed. Vodka bottles are emptied, more joints smoked. Alban is relatively abstemious, and gets up to leave about eleven, to a chorus of calls to stay.
Tango sees him out. They retrieve the black plastic bag with his belongings from the hall cupboard.
‘This you off, then, Al?’ Tango says quietly.
Alban looks at him. There’s something in Tango’s expression, as though he’s seen something in Alban’s.
‘Aye, might be a while,’ he says, twisting the top of the bin liner to get a better grip. ‘Through to Glasgow tomorrow, up north for a family gathering in a couple of days. After that, we’ll see.’
Tango puts his hand out. ‘Well, you take care, man, all right?’
‘Course I will. You too. Keep in touch.’
‘Aw aye?’ Tango grins.
‘No, seriously. I’m thinking about getting a mobile; maybe even tomorrow. I’ll call you.’
‘You do that, big man.’
‘Cheers, Tango. Thanks for everything.’
‘Via con Dios, Al.’
‘Not a fucking chance.’
They hug, then he’s out the door, down the stairs and away.
6
They’re walking along the bank of the River Kelvin on a cool day in Glasgow when it feels like the year’s turned, the city a distant grey loudness away and above them, the dank smell of the river - white tumbling down weirs, slack and dark on the long stretches in between - following them, its sound echoing under the bridges and between the walls and abutments hemming it.
She is dressed as ever, with gloves but no coat. He’s in boots and jeans and his old hiking jacket, though he’s had it cleaned and reproofed. They’re walking slowly. They have their arms round each other’s waists, her head sometimes resting lightly on his shoulder.
Finally, she is talking about what happened in the tsunami. She wouldn’t, before now. The shallow scars on her flank and back were the only memories she was prepared to reveal. They’re almost gone now, slowly fading to nothing. Now she’ll talk about what happened.
She was snorkelling over the reef, early morning. She’d left Sam, the guy she’d gone on holiday with - another climber - fast asleep in their beach hut. Another beautiful day; she’d felt energised and elated and had swum far along and far out, just happy to feel the sunlight and warm water on her skin. She’d been swimming, head down, watching a bright shoal of tiny fish far below, heading for a small ridge of reef vaguely visible ahead when she realised the fish had speeded up, and so had she; the rippled scape of sand under the fish was, quite abruptly, moving past much faster than it had been. Tiny puffs of sand, moving and lengthening like microscopic smoke trails, showed that some sort of current was moving the whole mass of water she and the fish were swimming in out to sea. She didn’t understand this.
She brought her head out of the water, but everything looked normal; waves everywhere, but with some roughness over the reef ahead that she hadn’t noticed before . . .
The water was moving away from the land. She started to realise what it might be as she was pulled over the start of the reef, the waves rising, becoming more turbulent. She felt a sudden chill and was uncertain whether this was a patch or current of cold water or something from inside herself. This meant something. She’d heard of this. This was bad. A warning. She put her head under the water again, trying to see the reef. It was very shallow; she didn’t want to hit any coral. You weren’t supposed to touch the reef, break any bits off. The water was turning cloudy with sand, filling with air bubbles. What she glimpsed of the reef w
as very close. She tried to swim towards what looked like a slightly deeper part off to one side. The water was getting wild over the reef, sloughing back from the land all along the coast of the island. She got a glimpse of the golden beach, lush green trees and perfectly blue sky in the distance, all seemingly serene and untroubled, as though nothing was happening.
She was pulled sideways on a curving current. Something slammed into her side and started to turn her over. She yelled, spitting out the snorkel’s mouthpiece as she was hauled on her back over the rough fingers and hard ridged surfaces of the coral.
Tsunami. It had to be a tsunami. She’d been to a conference in Japan, some place by the sea she couldn’t remember the name of where they had tsunami warning signs everywhere and this was one of the things they told you about, the phenomenon that let you know there was a big wave coming; the sea disappeared, pulling back from the land. When that happened you had to get to high ground, because the sea always came back, in a tsunami.
The sea was rough, no longer sparkling and blue but turning a sandy brown colour where it wasn’t frothing dirty white. The reef was behind her now. She tried to swim, keeping her body as close to the surface of the water as she could to avoid being hit by any more bits of reef or rock. She started swimming out to sea through the crashing waves. There was no pattern to the waves now, just chaos; she coughed and spluttered, taking in mouthfuls of gritty water. The mask and snorkel, she realised, had gone, torn off. She remembers thinking, quite calmly, that this was annoying and inconvenient, because the snorkel might have come in handy in all this turbulent water, and the fact she’d lost it meant she might die.
‘And I thought of Sam,’ she says, now, by the bank of the Kelvin. ‘He’d wanted to buy me a mobile at the airport before we left, but I wouldn’t let him. I had this little waterproof bag on my bikini bottom with money in it and the money was still there. Sam kept his mobile in his. If I’d had a mobile I could have rung him and warned him.’
‘Or that might have got torn off too,’ Alban says, tightening his arm around her, pulling her closer. ‘Or his might have been turned off. You don’t know.’
‘Anyway, I kept swimming out, following the water.’
‘Not to land?’
‘I was too far out. Anyway, it had just taken me.’
The water grew less turbulent, a little colder, as she followed its slow retreat. She thought of turning back, of swimming back to land, of running up the beach and along it back to the hotel and beach huts, warning people, warning Sam. But she didn’t know how soon the wave would come, was terrified that if she did swim back the tsunami would catch her while she was still running along the beach.
When the wave came it lifted her like a big breaker on a surf beach, but then didn’t drop her back; instead the bevelled, not quite yet breaking slope of water was like the edge of a vast moving slab of ocean, powering its way en masse towards the land. She felt herself accelerated in the direction of the shore, and turned and swam as hard as she could out to sea again, really frightened now, starting to panic, feeling the strength leach out of her as her muscles tired. She was a strong, fast swimmer; she tried to put what was happening out of her mind and just settle into a powerful, rhythmic crawl, imagining herself in a pool, trying for a personal best 100 metres.
She heard the wave hit the land, the thunder of its falling on the exposed reefs and sand, the splintering, crashing sound of it smashing trees. She listened for screams, each time she turned one ear upwards to the air, but didn’t think she heard any.
Finally, she was too exhausted to do the crawl. She turned on her back, to use a slightly different set of muscles in the backstroke. She could look back at the land now, seeing far distant trees, and waves almost as high. She couldn’t tell if she was still being driven towards the land or not. The trees she could see looked quite far away. She kept on swimming. Her arms and legs felt like jelly, like there was no bone in them, like they were as insubstantial and weak as the flesh of a stranded jellyfish. She felt sick, and retched up salty water, coughing and spluttering as some of it came down her nose and feeling for a moment that she was drowning. She kept on swimming.
Some time later a fishing boat picked her up. She tried to help them pull her into the boat but she had no strength left. It took three of the men to haul her in. She lay gasping on the guts-slicked deck, staring up at the rolling sky beyond a stubby mast, trying to thank them, saying, ‘Tsunami, tsunami.’ They put an old waterproof jacket round her, though she wasn’t cold. She got to her knees, puked over the gunwale, then saw they were heading in, towards land.
‘You’ve got to wait,’ she tried to tell them. ‘Sometimes there’s more than one.’ Didn’t they know this? She couldn’t explain. The men were staring at the land and shouting and pointing and arguing, seemingly unable to work out exactly where they were, or not sure whether to go back in or not. They didn’t pay her much attention and she was too weak to stand up and start shouting and waving her arms about and punch shoulders and talk loudly or whatever it would take to get them to listen to her and somehow make them understand.
She lay draped over the gunwale of the fishing boat, her hands dipping into the water, her head lying on the wooden rail, her body slack against the inside of the hull, her lower legs splayed across the deck, and she listened to the drone of the outboard taking them back towards danger and to the sound of the men shouting and arguing, and she started to cry as she realised what she was going to have to do.
She waited as long as she dared while a little strength began to return to her muscles, then levered herself up and slipped over the side of the boat. She’d hoped they might circle back and try to pick her up again, which might at least stop them from going any further in, but the boat ploughed on. She never knew if they’d even noticed her throwing herself back into the water again.
‘You had to get back in the water?’ he says.
‘I’d convinced myself there was going to be another wave; maybe more than one. I felt as long as I could stay in the water far enough out I’d be safe. I’m at home in the water, I can tread water, I can swim for hours at the right rhythm. Even tired out I felt I had a better chance than being back on shore, facing another wave.’
‘Fucking hell.’ He stops and swings into her, taking her in both arms, enfolding her, hugging her to him, putting his nose into her short, black-blonde hair, and feeling her respond and clasp him to her. ‘And there was another wave?’
‘It was almost as big as the first,’ she says into the collar of his jacket. ‘Then a smaller one after that. I think I saw the fishing boat upside down in the trees a couple of days later, while we were still waiting to be lifted out. But it might not have been the same one. I forgot to look for a name or number or anything. Just another white fishing boat with an outboard.’
When she says ‘we’, she means all the surviving holidaymakers. She doesn’t mean her and Sam. They finally found his body half a kilometre inland a week after the tsunami hit.
A few things came to fill her mind as she trod water and swam weakly and discoordinatedly against the slow current. First, she wished she had a hat (she kept flapping water over her head to cool herself as the sun rose, beating down). Second, she remembered that Alban had once called her a tough cookie. At the time she had felt somewhat insulted, but just then, floating there wondering if Sam was dead and whether she was going to die, the phrase took on a kind of almost mystical significance. Yes, she was a tough cookie, and she would survive and she would not easily disintegrate and turn to mush just because she had been dunked in the water for a long time.
Also, third, she tried to quantify how hopelessly, uselessly, pathetically weak she felt. It took a long time - she was a mathematician, after all, not a poet, so images were not normally her strong suit - but eventually she decided on one. It involved a banana. Specifically, the long stringy bits you find between the skin and the flesh of a banana. She felt so weak you could have tied her up with those stringy bits of
a banana and she wouldn’t have been able to struggle free. That was how weak she felt.
She was so exhausted and delirious with the weight of sunshine slamming down on her blonde, short-haired head all those long lonely hours that when she did finally come up with this image of utter and pathetic weakness she gave herself a croaky little cheer.
She didn’t swim back in until some time past noon. When she got to the shore, staggering through the debris washing around the tide-line, having to sit on the wave-smoothed sand for a while to get some strength back into her quivering legs, she thought that - despite trying to swim against the current and so keep opposite the same stretch of shore all this time - she must be a kilometre or two down the coast. This stretch was unrecognisable, just a wasteland of flattened trees and drifts of branches, leaves and fronds, studded with more smashed wood and the occasional piece of wreckage recognisable as human stuff: white plastic patio chairs, a piece of material that might have been a sundress, a cheery-looking beach towel with a sunset on it, and a parasol - colourful strips hanging tattered from white, twisted ribs. There were some sort of sand-covered ruins off to one side. She walked inland a little and discovered the remains of the tarmac road, and looked back and realised that the ruins were the hotel they’d been staying beside. She had come ashore almost exactly where their beach hut had been.
She escaped with bruising and cuts to her side and back, dehydration, and sunburn that made her face and shoulders peel.
He doesn’t know what to say. He just holds her. He’d been waiting for her to tell him, but had started to think that maybe she wouldn’t, ever. All he’d known was that she’d been there with this guy Sam - he’d never met him - and Sam had died and she’d survived because she’d been in the sea at the time. The rest, the details, she hadn’t wanted to talk about, until now.