by Iain Banks
‘No, but before Dan gets back.’
‘Why?’ Though of course he knows. He tries not to let the hurt into his voice.
‘Because it’s too complicated otherwise. And I’m not so great at lying.’
‘But why do I need to go if—?’
‘Look, it’s not like we’re going to be able to do this again, Alban. He’ll be here. I’ll be here.’
It’s been the first time they’ve made love in a bed.
‘Well, I know, but—’
‘I’ll say we had a fight. An argument. Some family thing. I can make that stick. That I can do. But not if you’re here.’
He waits a while, bringing her a little closer, stroking her hair, her newly skinny side and flank, cupping one sweet, smallened breast. ‘Okay,’ he says.
She reaches down, pulls at some of the sheet lying crumpled beneath them. ‘And I’d better get this washed, too.’ She breathes deeply, glancing at the blinds then pushing away from him. ‘Christ, it’s dawn. Come on; shift. If I get this down to the laundry now I can have it back on by the time he gets back.’
He helps her strip the sheet, wondering when she became so thoughtful, so adept, so managerial.
They say their goodbyes in the apartment block’s basement laundry while pale pink sunshine seeps through a high, grubby, pavement-level window. She doesn’t let him kiss her deeply, unpeels his hands from her behind and just shakes her head when he tries to say too much.
She puts her forehead against his and says, ‘We probably shouldn’t have done this.’
‘Yes we should.’
‘No. No we shouldn’t.’
He finds out much later that Dan guessed they’d fucked anyway, almost as soon as he got back, and threw her out.
Since Lima, he’s been keeping at least half a grand of Blake’s money inside his sock, curled in a sweaty wad round his ankle. He uses some of this to fund a taxi to the station and then buy a train ticket back to LA.
He starts university a month or so later.
Sophie avoids him subsequently.
The next time he’ll see her will be at a trade fair in Singapore. She’ll have perfect, shiningly white teeth, her nose will be smaller, she’ll be slimmer still and even more blonde.
7
Thursday. Verushka drives him north, out of the city in a grey smir of rain along Great Western Road, staying within a couple of mph of the speed limit until the roads near the Erskine Bridge, slowing again subsequently then opening the Forester up once more after Dumbarton. The traffic thickens along the side of Loch Lomond but she manages some coolly judged overtaking nevertheless.
‘This thing feels quicker,’ Alban says, frowning.
She flashes him a grin. ‘Yeah, I’ve had it chipped.’
‘That makes it go faster?’
‘Oh yeah.’
‘Bet you didn’t tell the insurance company.’
‘Bet I did, smart alec.’
The back of the vehicle is mostly full of her kit. He has one newly bought bag but she has a substantial backpack plus all her other hiking gear and a spare tent in case she wants to establish a base camp partway between the road and any given mountain - otherwise she’ll sleep in the car or wherever’s appropriate on the hill in a bivvy bag.
They make good time after the road opens out past Ardlui, scything through drizzle and darting past other road traffic. She gets flashed at once by an oncoming car, and passed by a growling Evo carrying serious tail. The getting passed, she explains, cancels out the getting flashed at. Especially as the flashing was entirely unjustified.
They reach positively dizzy speeds during an unexpected dry period on the few miles before Bridge of Orchy. They stop for fuel and lunch in Fort William. She’s in what she describes as mountaineering mode, and packs away an all-day breakfast of considerable size and fat content. He smiles at her, shaking his head. Just out of town they pass the sign for Inverlochy Castle Hotel where Fielding and the duet of great-aunts will be staying the night, breaking the journey to Garbadale.
They listen to her iPod on random, playing through the car’s system via a technically illegal radio transmitter unit, and are treated to rather a lot of Bach, mixed in with Berlioz, Gwen Stefani, Hector Zazou, the Kaiser Chiefs, Jethro Tull, the White Stripes, Belle and Sebastian, Michelle Shocked, Massive Attack, Kate Bush, Primal Scream and the Beatles. They’re twenty-one tracks in before a Led Zep song, which apparently is some sort of record (though, as she points out, they all are - haw haw).
The obvious route is via Inverness but Verushka has other ideas so they swing west at Invergarry - he asks to stop and look at some interesting trees but she wants to press on - and take the road for Kyle. The roads to the junction at Auchertyre pass in a dazed sweep of sunlit summits, heavy showers and startled overtakees. More pedal to the metal stuff along the roads either side of Achnasheen as the road dries. Verushka is driving with a broad smile on her face.
‘Maxed out?’ he asks.
She glances at the speedometer, which appears to have run out of numbers to point at. ‘Yup.’
‘Tyres up to this sort of speed?’
‘Yup.’
North of Ullapool - a fuel top-up and scones with tea - the late afternoon brightens further. She lets the pace drop off a little, though they’re still zipping past slower traffic. They’re less than an hour from Garbadale.
‘Have you sorted out what your -’ she hoists one eyebrow ‘- I’m trying to think of another word instead of agenda, here,’ she confesses. ‘But anyway, have you? Do you really know what you’re going there to do?’ She glances over at him.
He watches the road ahead unspool towards them.
‘I feel like a UN Observer or something,’ he tells her. ‘I’m going to watch them tear themselves apart, for money. Or stay shackled together, in some dubious spirit of solidarity. Which we are not, frankly, very good at.’
‘But what do you want?’
‘I suppose being honest with myself I want Spraint to fuck off and leave us alone, though if we’re prepared to sell out to them then we deserve whatever we get. With the possible exception of the money.’
‘Okay. How much money?’
‘They’re valuing the seventy-five per cent of the company they don’t already own at a hundred and twenty million US dollars. About seventy million of your Earth quids.’
‘That a final offer?’
‘They say. But they only started at a hundred, so probably not. If we’re greedy we’ll hold out for something a lot closer to two hundred mill US.’
‘And are you greedy?’
‘Of course we are.’ He smiles humourlessly.
‘So if they raised their bid to that level, you’d still vote no and try to get other people to do the same?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you’re not that bothered if it goes the other way?’
‘Correct.’
‘And it doesn’t mean much to you financially?’
‘I’ve a hundred shares left, specifically so I still get a vote. If I’m forced to sell I’ll use the proceeds to buy you a slap-up meal and a bottle of something nice to go with it. But there won’t be any change.’
She frowns. ‘Can you be forced to sell?’
‘If they get ninety-two per cent of the shares, the law says they can buy the rest compulsorily.’
‘Hmm.’
She’s quiet for a few moments while a moderately fast-moving Audi saloon is dispatched with a series of deft flicks of the wrists and a blip of throttle.
Alban twists in his seat, looking back. ‘I think that was Aunt Kath and Lance,’ he says. He gives a small wave, in case it was. The Audi flashes its lights. They haven’t been flashed since Glen Coe. Or overtaken since the Evo near Crianlarich, for that matter.
‘That count?’
She shakes her head. ‘That doesn’t count.’
‘Anyway,’ he says, settling back, ‘I don’t think I’ll have much influence on them. They’ll sell. Just a q
uestion of how much for.’
She looks over at him. ‘And what about your cousin? What about Sophie?’
‘Yes, she’s supposed to be there. Probably.’
‘That’s not what I meant. Come on.’ She says it gently enough.
He watches the road for a while. ‘I don’t know,’ he says quietly. ‘It’s like I’m always expecting -’ he looks over at Verushka ‘- at this point I’m looking for an alternative to “closure”, but, well . . .’
‘What? Every time you see her you realise you still feel something for her?’
‘I suppose.’ He looks down, brushing imaginary specks off his jeans. ‘Something like that.’ He reaches up and massages his temples, as though he has a headache. ‘I don’t know. It’s . . .’ His voice trails off.
‘How do you feel about her?’ Verushka sounds intrigued, no more. ‘Come on, McGill. Be honest.’ Another glance. ‘With yourself; be honest.’
‘Oh, I don’t know, VG,’ he says, shaking his head as he looks out at the mountains sliding slowly past in the distance. ‘Sometimes I think the easiest person to fool is yourself. How do I feel about her? I honestly don’t know. I look and look and I can’t seem to find anything there. I feel that I’ll only know when I see her again, but then that never works out either. And she’s - she’s changed so much. Changed herself so much.’ He shakes his head. ‘She looks good - she looks ten years younger than she is - but she’s had a lot of work done.’
‘Think she’ll have had anything else done since?’
‘Ha! Fuck knows. Botox, probably. Facelift? Bigger bum? Smaller bum? Boob job, either direction? I don’t know; what’s the fashion these days?’
Verushka grins. ‘Gee, dude, you are like so asking the wrong poisin.’
‘And your American accent is still terrible,’ he tells her, smiling at her.
‘Maybe so, but, one day . . . Anyway.’
‘Anyway,’ he says, reaching out and putting his hand to the nape of her neck.
‘That’s nice,’ she purrs, pushing her head back a fraction. ‘If I start to drool, you will stop, won’t you?’ Another flashed grin. ‘Same if we crash.’
‘Deal,’ he tells her. ‘But shouldn’t the question you ought to be asking be how I feel about you?’
She shrugs. ‘I know how you feel about me.’
‘You do? Well, tell me.’
‘You think I’m great,’ she tells him. ‘Which, I mean, I am, obviously. ’ She has a cheerful smile on her face. ‘But, you know I’ve been free with my favours, I’m unrepentantly selfish, I have no intention of ever getting married and I don’t want children. So we’re fine unless and until you find somebody you can love who wants the things you want, especially children.’
‘Or you do.’
‘That’s the difference,’ she says. ‘I pretty much already have what I want.’
‘Well lucky old you.’
‘Yup, lucky me.’ She spares a look for the few high, puffy clouds. ‘Actually, no, that’s not entirely true.’
‘No?’
‘I miss you,’ she says. Brightly, almost. ‘I told you last night. I meant it. I wish you lived in Glasgow, or somewhere nearby. I wish we saw each other more often.’ She shrugs.
He wonders what to say to this. ‘Well,’ he says eventually, ‘I guess I have to live somewhere.’
‘Steady, now,’ she says archly, ‘these wild rushes of enthusiasm will be the unmaking of you.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘That sounded wrong. I just mean . . . But what about you? Would you move somewhere else?’
‘Has to have a university and easy access to mountains,’ she says crisply. ‘Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen. In Europe, woh, anywhere near the Alps would do. Oslo. In the States: Colorado . . . Oh, loads of places. Why?’
‘Just checking.’
‘I’m not necessarily asking you to move in, you understand,’ she says.
‘I realise that.’
‘Still, you don’t want to lose me, Alban,’ she says gently, and looks over at him for long enough that when she looks back to the road she has to make a small adjustment to the steering.
‘No,’ he says. ‘I don’t.’
He watches her face, side on, for a moment. He loves this woman, he realises, but he doesn’t know how to tell her exactly how much without sounding either mealy-mouthed or just too cold. He has never been head-over-heels in love, not even with Sophie, in a sense. Sophie is so long ago, and what happened between them occurred at such a young, even formative age that she forms this awful, unstable, hopelessly compromised foundation for all his feelings for all the women he’s ever felt anything for since.
But no, he does not want to lose Verushka.
‘Why?’ he asks, keeping his voice even. ‘Am I in any danger of losing you?’
‘No,’ she says. ‘Not that I can see. But I don’t know what’s going to come out the other side of this long weekend, when you see your old girlfriend, your long-lost love, the gal what popped your cherry.’ She looks over, an unfunny, even sad smile on her face. ‘What’s worrying is I don’t think you do either.’
‘Maybe that’s why I feel so nervous,’ he confesses.
‘Really?’ She sounds concerned.
He pats his belly through his shirt. ‘Really.’
‘Oh, come on,’ she chides. ‘It’ll be all right. You’ll probably have a great time. You’ll persuade them all to join the Scottish Socialist Party and send the Spraint guys back off to California tarred and feathered and questioning the very laws of capitalism itself. Sophie’ll have just the sweetest guy in tow and twins she’s been keeping secret for the last year and she’ll thank you for introducing her to the mysteries of lurve and say it’s time you both moved on and you and her husband will bond amazingly well and, oh, all that shit. Even your granny will be nice.’
‘She’s often nice. Just never without an ulterior motive.’
‘But don’t be nervous. It’s only family.’
‘Don’t be nervous,’ he mimics, muttering half to himself. ‘It’s only nuclear.’
They leave the main road at the village of Sloy in the shadow of the mountain called Quinag and take a right, heading over a low rise towards Loch Glencoul and the road round to Loch Beag and the great estate of Garbadale.
They turn in through the grand gateway and past the gatehouse. Alban looks back at the waters of the loch and the humpback bridge carrying the road over both the River Garve and the path that leads from the house down to the loch’s head. The Forester crunches up the drive between rows of Western Red cedars.
‘And thar she blows,’ Verushka says, chin on steering wheel, gaze upwards, diverted by the sight of the house starting to appear over and through the curving avenue of tall trees.
The house is revealed in sunlight. There are a dozen or so cars and a couple of white vans parked outside. They drive into the shadow of the south wing, drive out again. ‘Aye, here’s oor wee hielin’ hame,’ Alban says.
‘What a fucking monstrous pile,’ Verushka breathes. ‘Did anybody ever need that many turrets?’
‘It’s for sale,’ he tells her. ‘You always wanted a pied-à-terre somewhere up here. Even comes with its own mountains. You should make us an offer.’
‘Na,’ she says, pulling in between a brace of Range Rovers. ‘Thanks all the same but actually I was looking for somewhere a little bigger.’
‘Well, it’s a disappointment, but I understand.’
‘Alban! Hello. Will you stop doing that? Please! At least inside?’
‘Hi, cuz.’ Alban raises one hand. ‘Hi, ah, small children.’
They’re met in the grand hall by Haydn, who has been drafted in as the family member least likely to make a terrible mess of the accommodation and general hospitality arrangements, even though the house does have a manager who is perfectly used to doing this sort of thing. As they enter, four or five waist-high children of indeterminate gender are in the act of running hollering down the sta
irs, circuiting a large, sturdy octagonal table in the centre of the hall and then dashing out through the front doors. Alban watches them go, hand still raised in unacknowledged greeting. He shrugs.
Haydn blinks through his glasses at Verushka, who stands on her heels, hands behind her back, smiling at him, bathed in late-afternoon sunlight filtered through the double-height stained glass windows. ‘And this must be . . .’ Haydn looks down at his clipboard, riffling through pages.
‘It’s all right, I’m not staying,’ Verushka says, stepping up to him and sticking out her hand. ‘Verushka Graef. You must be Haydn. How do you do.’
‘Yes. Pleased to meet you. So, you’re not staying?’
‘Just passing through.’
‘I’m staying,’ Alban says helpfully, watching a couple of workmen move a large plant in a weighty pot to the stairs and then start heaving it upwards, one deliberate step at a time.
‘Yes,’ Haydn says, looking at his clipboard list again. ‘Bad news or good?’ he starts to ask Alban, then looks, surprised, at Verushka. ‘Passing through?’ he asks, incredulous. ‘To where?’
‘Further north,’ she tells him. ‘This is only Sutherland, after all.’
‘Huh,’ Haydn says, unclipping a pen and scoring Alban’s name through. ‘But it was the Vikings called it that.’
‘And Greenland Greenland,’ Verushka agrees, staring up at the panelled ceiling with its emblazoned shields and pendulous gilded doodahs like giant pine cones. ‘Those wacky Vikings.’
‘What was that about bad news, Haydn?’ Alban asks, putting his bag down on the parquet.
‘Oh, you’re sharing with Fielding.’
‘Does he know?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Does he snore?’ Verushka asks.
‘Not as far as I know,’ Haydn says.
She nods her head at Alban, says, ‘He does,’ and walks off a little way to admire a huge brass dinner gong, flicking it with one blunt fingernail. ‘Do you get gong tuners?’ she murmurs.
‘Do I snore, really?’ Alban asks, genuinely surprised.
The workmen get the giant plant to the top of the stairs and start rolling the pot along the gallery.