The Steep Approach to Garbadale

by Iain Banks

  Hell’s teeth, maybe he should just come clean. Maybe the right thing to do was just to admit it, get it out in the open and say yes, he had changed, he was different, he didn’t feel the same any more and he was already thinking about quitting. Maybe he should just say all this and hand in his resignation now, here. He’d probably have to say it some time, why not now?

  Because he’d always feel he’d been bounced into it by Win, that was why. He’d never be entirely certain that it had really all been of his own volition. Well, he refused to surrender control to her. She’d taken over that time at Lydcombe, making him feel humiliated, ashamed and powerless, and he wasn’t going to let her do it again. He wanted to make the decision himself and go in his own time.

  Well, they’d circled round this enough. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry if I gave you any . . .’ He smiled. ‘Just cause to doubt me. That wasn’t my intention.’ And that, he thought, is as close to an apology as you’re going to get, old girl.

  Win looked momentarily very old, he thought. It was just for a second or so - as though some mask of will had slipped briefly from her face, only to be snatched back into place again - then the image of constructed self was back, the calculated, calculating façade all accounted for once more. He wondered if she’d seen something similar happen with him. He wondered if that was what she saw all the time, and if this explained her uncanny - and also deeply canny - ability to read people the way she did.

  ‘Accepted,’ she said.

  He waved at two silvery pots. ‘Tea or coffee?’

  He’d decided to do Business Studies fully expecting to change his course. He’d come to the conclusion that he had to compromise with his family and their expectations of him. He’d seem to go along with what they expected and then change tack when they’d been bought off. If he started with Business Studies, gave it a good enough go and then switched to something that actually interested him - English, history, even art - then at least he’d have shown willing. That ought to keep them off his back until he graduated. This seemed like a good plan and a not remotely crazy way of making one of life’s more important decisions.

  Then, a few months into his course, when he was almost enjoying it and even getting reasonable marks for a couple of essays, just because he knew he wouldn’t be doing this for very much longer, he heard that Sophie had changed her mind about her own academic course. She was doing Business Studies, too. She was committed to a commercial career, with the family firm if the right opening was there.

  Jeez, he’d thought. Was she doing this just because he was doing something similar? Was this a kind of public yet hidden signal? They hadn’t been in touch since the sweet and wonderful but also mildly disastrous time in San Francisco, months earlier. He sat in his room in Bristol, looking out at the unleaved trees of Castle Park and the slow grey swirlings on the broad curve of the Floating Harbour, the river that was barely a river, its surface brown and pewter under a low fleet of clouds dragging long trains of rain under their ragged hems.

  He remembered the startling desert brightness of the Mojave, the pore-sapping dryness of the air, the squinting glare of the rows and rows of pale, abandoned jets under the peeled-open sky, the little plane landing, Sophie - albeit an altered, mutated Sophie, a Sophie making a sort of phase change of herself - stepping out of the plane. He remembered Dan’s apartment, the crackly noises from the old vinyl records, the feel of her dancing up close to him, the smell and feel of her hair, the sheer naked pleasure of bedding the girl after so many al fresco couplings. He tried to forget about the scene in the laundry, the weak sun and the artificial smell of fabric conditioner.

  For a moment or two, in the hazy San Franciscan morning chill, in the taxi heading for the railway station, he’d felt pretty good about it all. He’d seen her again, after all; he’d won at last, eventually surmounting all the obstacles the family had put in his way (even if it had happened by chance - that didn’t matter) and finally got to meet her again. And they hadn’t fought, they hadn’t blamed each other for everything that had gone wrong and the years they’d been forced to spend apart; they’d connected, they’d made love again.

  She’d wanted him. It didn’t matter that she’d later said it had been a mistake, it didn’t matter that she was with another guy; these things happened. She’d wanted him. He hadn’t forced himself on her, he hadn’t seduced her. It had been mutual. Unpressured. And she had suggested dancing, not him.

  Still, she’d more or less thrown him out. He believed her that she wasn’t a good liar and it would be easier to deceive Dan if he wasn’t there, but all the same. Ejected again; torn apart once more. It wasn’t a good pattern.

  There was an early train leaving for LA just twenty minutes after he arrived at the station. By the time he’d bought his ticket and found the right train - surprisingly busy, full of suits and families - he was away from the city almost before he knew he’d been there.

  Gulls moved over the Floating Harbour, banking and wheeling across the banked-up, cradled waters.

  Now and again, just sometimes, if he’s really drunk or stoned and feeling nostalgic or soppy or whatever you might want to call it, he still whispers to himself: They’ve all bloody gone, Fell off me ’oss, didn’ I?, Blimey, I didn’t enjoy it that much, and - now - Not a flippin’ fing.

  Cuz, cuz, sweet cuz.

  He’d tried getting back in touch with Sophie after meeting her in California, but without much success. He’d got her address in New York from cousin Fabiole, sent her a carefully considered letter - friendly, even loving, but not weird or anything - and received in return a terse note saying that she was very busy and didn’t think it was a good idea they stayed in touch. She was sorry if she’d hurt him.

  That had been two months ago. Now this news that she was doing Business Studies.

  He decided that probably it wasn’t a deliberate thing, Sophie taking up the same kind of course as him, but that possibly it indicated a desire that she might not know she had herself to somehow track him, keep parallel with him. That would do, he guessed.

  He stuck in. He determined that he’d do his best to enjoy the course he’d embarked upon. He made new friends, had various relationships - never really committing, often talking to his girlfriends about Sophie, his childhood sweetheart (that was how he had started to refer to her) - and spent a year during the four-year degree course working for the family firm on Product Development. He’d kind of hoped that being at Bristol, so close to Lydcombe, he might be invited back - he’d like to see how the gardens were doing, apart from anything else - but he never was.

  At the next family gathering - Grandpa Bert’s funeral, at Garbadale, in the early spring of 1990 - he’d asked Aunt Lauren about Sophie not receiving his letters. Again, she professed to be as surprised as he was. She had certainly forwarded the letters. She’d suggested that maybe Sophie telling him that she hadn’t received them was just her way of trying to protect his feelings.

  He’d hoped Sophie would be there for the funeral, but she’d been too busy with her studies in the States and everybody agreed that it was a long way to ask somebody to come just to pay their last respects to an old fellow who’d been little better than a vegetable for the past decade anyway.

  ‘And how was he?’ Grandma Win said when he mentioned seeing Blake in Hong Kong. She was dressed all in black and looked, Alban thought, like a crow. She carried a handkerchief balled up in one hand and her eyes looked a little red. She looked hurt, now. He was already starting to regret telling her he’d seen Blake; another painful memory, dragging up the past of a familial black sheep. He’d only done so for something to say. He’d rather not have talked to her at all but his parents had insisted. He was so relieved she didn’t ignore him or say something horrible about him and Sophie that he’d relaxed, never imagining he might upset her by telling her he’d paid a visit to her son.

  ‘He was fine,’ he told her.

  ‘And what did he want?’

  ‘Noth
ing. Didn’t want anything. I mean, he’s really rich. Honest, he was okay, Gran. He showed me around Hong Kong. It was brilliant. And he gave me money.’

  ‘I bet he did,’ Win said, sounding unimpressed. ‘And? So? What did he have to say for himself?’

  Alban had to think. ‘Nothing in particular. He just showed me around, introduced me to people. He seems to know everybody. I met the Governor and everything. Uncle Blake’s seriously rich, Gran. He’s got this skyscraper. I mean, it’s really his.’

  ‘Well, bully for him. How much money did he give you?’

  ‘I can’t remember,’ Alban lied.

  ‘Did he talk about the family?’

  ‘A bit. He was okay, Gran. Honestly. I think he’d like to see, well, everybody -’

  ‘Indeed. Well, I don’t want to see him again,’ Win told him.

  ‘Oh,’ Alban said. ‘Okay. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yes,’ Win said, with a tone of finality, and turned away.

  ‘And so I had a look for myself, but of course everything Bunty had said was a complete and utter fib: instead, there the fellow was with a Playboy in one hand and his John Thomas, thoroughly engorged, in the other. So I closed the door pronto and turned round to find Sister glowering down at me, saying, “Yes? And?” and I naturally didn’t have the first idea what to say until suddenly I had a brainwave and said, “Well, Sister, I think he’s preparing to discharge himself!” Ha ha ha!’

  ‘Ha ha!’ agreed Doris, after a modest delay.

  Fielding paused as he poured the last of the dessert wine into Beryl’s glass, smiling broadly at first and then joining in the laughter when it showed no particular sign of subsiding especially quickly. He sat back in his seat, sighing mightily and taking a surreptitious glance at his watch as he lifted his water glass to his lips. Still not even eleven. He’d hoped it might be close to midnight.

  One of the Inverlochy staff appeared at the table, refilling his glass. Doris and Beryl were slapping each other on the forearm and holding napkins to their mouths as they giggled, glancing round the now nearly empty dining room. Most of the other guests at the hotel had moved through to the lounge or the main hall for coffee.

  ‘Discharge himself! D’you see?’ Beryl said in a sort of subdued shriek.

  ‘Yes! Oh yes!’ Doris coughed. She drained her Sauternes, then looked at the empty half-bottle sitting on the table. ‘My, that was lovely,’ she told Fielding. She gazed mournfully at her now empty glass and the equally defunct bottle. ‘They are such terribly small bottles though, aren’t they?’

  Fielding smiled the smile of a tired, tired man who can associate every bend and straight on the road between Glasgow and Fort William with some confused phrase or cross-purposed exchange of geriatric garrulity and has come to accept that he is not going to see his bed this side of the witching hour. He signalled to the hovering waiter, raising his eyebrows, and held up the sticky emptiness of the Sauternes bottle.

  ‘What are we all going to do if everybody does sell their shares to these Sprint people?’ Great-Aunt Doris asked suddenly, watching the waiter exit, defunct bottle in hand.

  ‘Spraint, dear,’ Beryl corrected. She smiled at Fielding, who seemed oblivious, fiddling with his napkin. ‘Spend our ill-gotten gains on wine, women and whatever, one imagines,’ she told Doris.

  Doris looked suddenly alarmed. ‘You wouldn’t up sticks and abandon me and move to your own desert island or that sort of thing, would you, old thing?’ she asked Beryl, blinking furiously.

  Beryl smiled. ‘No, dear. If there were any desert islands on the cards, I’d take you with me.’ Then the smile faded a little and she looked down at the table, letting a silence descend.

  Fielding was trying to do origami with his napkin. ‘Some people would use the dosh to do things they’d always wanted to,’ he said absently, frowning as he tried to tuck one corner of cloth inside another. ‘Fund projects, use as seed capital.’ The bits of cloth weren’t fitting together quite properly. He wished he had three hands. ‘Dreams, really,’ he muttered. He glanced up to find both the old girls looking at him. His gaze darted from one to the other. ‘Probably,’ he added. ‘I mean, possibly.’ He cleared his throat, shook his napkin flat again. ‘Maybe.’

  ‘Is that what you would do with yours, dear?’ Doris asked.

  Fielding shrugged. ‘Well, I don’t know. I suppose. I was just talking hypothetically. I mean, I, I personally don’t have anything—’ The waiter reappeared. ‘Ah, more wine!’

  ‘Oh!’ Doris said, turning in her seat. ‘Did we order more? I suppose we must. Oh well, then.’

  Beryl smiled sadly. ‘Jolly-D.’

  The years passed. He got a 2.1 and took up the post waiting for him in Wopuld Games Ltd. Sophie had already started with Wopuld Games Inc., the company’s US subsidiary. He felt that basically he was over her, though she was never far from his thoughts and he still hoped they might meet up now and again, through business if nothing else. Then, well, who knew?

  He knew about playing a long game.

  In third year he had shared a flat in St Judes with three guys who were really into playing the board version of Empire! Because his surname was McGill and he’d never mentioned anything to the guys about the family firm - they were all doing English or art and weren’t really interested in his course - they didn’t realise he was part of the family who owned the rights, made the games, took the profits.

  He knew all there was to know about how to play the game, though that still didn’t mean he won all the time. Empire! wasn’t chess; it depended on luck on occasion, both in the initial set-up and then in the playing. Still, you could get a lot better at playing it with lots of practice, and he’d spent a fair bit of his childhood playing the board version.

  One of his flatmates was Chris, whose board it was and who thought himself a pretty damn shit-hot Empire! player. Chris, Alban was fairly sure, had assumed that he would be the ace game-player in the flat. He dismissed Alban’s first few wins as beginner’s luck, which let Alban know that Chris wasn’t that clever. They’d agreed at the start of the semester that they’d have a league that ran all that academic year, and as Alban gradually built up a lead over everybody else, Chris started to realise Alban was more than just lucky.

  After a while Alban noticed Chris beginning to change his game-playing style. Now, he would always choose to attack Alban whenever Alban’s forces got to a level Chris regarded as being too great, even though they might pose no obvious tactical or strategic threat to Chris’s homelands, territories or expeditionary forces. Alban still won sometimes, and Chris improved his record only slightly, while occasionally other people used the opportunity to gang up on Alban, or attack Chris while he was busy trying to whittle down Alban’s forces. Initially Alban just accepted this, but, after one game when he was left relatively powerless and two other players tussled it out inelegantly, inexpertly, for a win they were each too crap and stoned actually to accomplish - it ended in a smoky stalemate and an agreed draw - Alban decided to change the way he responded to Chris’s policeman role.

  Next time Chris attacked him, committing a sizeable but restrained amount of forces to the battle, Alban went after him with all he had. He defeated Chris but left himself hopelessly weakened. They were both taken out of the game in the next round. This time one of their pals actually managed to win the game.

  Chris protested during the game and at length afterwards when they sat around drinking and watching telly with the sound down.

  ‘Why did you do that, man? I wasn’t trying to put you out the game! I was just trying to reduce your power a bit.’

  ‘Yeah, I know,’ Alban told him, opening a couple of cans and passing one to Chris. Chris was a gangly guy with frizzy dark hair and bad skin.

  ‘So why did you go fucking mental, Al?’

  ‘I don’t like you doing that.’

  ‘But it’s all part of the game, man.’

  ‘I know; so’s what I did.’

  ‘Yeah, but it�
��s just to stop you getting too powerful.’

  ‘Oh, yeah, I know why you’re doing it. I just want you to stop.’

  ‘Well, I ain’t gonna,’ Chris told him, laughing. He accepted a joint from one of their flatmates, took a shallow toke and passed it to Alban.

  ‘Well then,’ Alban said, shrugging.

  ‘But you lost, Al!’ Chris pointed out. ‘You got me, but you fucked yourself.’

  ‘Yeah, and I’ll keep doing it until you stop attacking me when there’s no good reason to, apart from this taking-me-down-a-peg thing.’

  ‘What? You’re kidding!’

  ‘No, I’m serious. I’ll keep doing it.’

  ‘You’ll keep on going after me, after me homelands and everything, just cos I attack one block?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘That’s crazy! You’ll get me out but you’ll put yourself out as well!’

  ‘Yeah, I know. Until you stop doing it.’

  ‘Well, what if I don’t?’

  Alban shrugged.

  ‘But you lose the game, man!’ Chris pointed out, struggling to see the logic of this.

  Alban clinked cans. ‘Cheers.’

  Chris attacked him in just the same way for just the same reasons in the next two games, and Alban reacted just as he had before.

  Chris told him he was crazy, but in the next game, didn’t try the same manoeuvre. Alban explained one drunken night, just in case Chris hadn’t got it, that there was the game, and then there was the meta-game. Even without a league lasting all year long, there was always the meta-game, the game beyond the game; you had to think of that, too.

  Chris told him he was still fucking crazy.

  ‘You take care.’

  ‘You too.’

  ‘I’m serious. The weather forecast looks pretty shitty for tonight and tomorrow. Don’t take any stupid risks. Please. Come back safely.’

  ‘Depend on it.’ Verushka, already kitted out, booted and fleeced, goes up on tiptoes to kiss his forehead, then crunches back on to the gravel flat-footed and plants another squarely and long on his lips. ‘I’m serious too,’ she whispers, hugging him close. ‘You take good care. You don’t take any stupid risks.’