by Iain Banks
Meanwhile, the Spraint guys had landed at Inverness but their helicopter was grounded while the wind was so strong and the cloud base so low. They might have to hire a car, too.
Alban was still talking to people; over breakfast, then while people were hanging around waiting for the weather to improve or the others to arrive. A morning’s fishing on Loch Garve had been arranged, but that too had had to be shelved due to the weather, so everybody was kind of at a loose end. The children were entertaining themselves noisily in the old library/games room, playing pool and table tennis. Those adults who could be bothered were reading the papers Spraint had sent supporting their bid. People mostly gravitated to the drawing room with its multiplicity of seats, chairs and couches and a roaring fire that served as an antidote to the sheets of rain beating against the windows.
Aunt Kathleen was studying her laptop, sitting at one end of the long table in the kitchen with a bacon roll and a mug of tea. Kath was a comfortably upholstered fifty-one, currently wearing a sea-blue blouse and the skirt of her business suit, jacket slung over the seat back. Brown, greying hair in a long ponytail. She was about the only relevant person he hadn’t yet spoken to about the proposed sale to the US corporation.
‘Aunt Kath, you’re not frittering away what may be our last few hours as an independent company doing anything as frivolous as playing a game, are you?’ Alban asked, sitting across the corner of the table from her.
‘Hi, Alban,’ she said. She swivelled the laptop towards him briefly, then back again.
He looked surprised. ‘They have games that look like spreadsheets now? Whatever next.’
‘Just reviewing the current state of the Wopuld Group’s finances,’ she explained.
‘And how are the dear old books - still in the black?’
‘Black as the ace of hearts,’ Kathleen said, then smiled thinly over the top of her glasses at him. ‘Joking. Accountant’s humour.’
‘Really? Well, good just to know it exists at all.’
‘Anyway, we’re still solvent.’
‘All the better for Spraint to gobble us up.’
‘You’re against, then,’ Aunt Kath said, peering at the screen rather than looking at him. ‘Thought you would be, heard you were.’
‘Well, if it was up to me alone, I’d be completely agin it, but as it is I just want people to make the right decision. Eyes open, you know?’
‘Well, my eyes are open.’ Kath blew on her mug of tea, then sipped it. She took a bite from her bacon roll.
‘And you’re for the sell-off,’ Alban said.
Aunt Kath nodded for a bit until she’d swallowed. ‘Yes, though not at the price they’re offering right now,’ she said. ‘And my eleven thousand shares speak rather louder than your . . .’ She performed a few key strokes. One eyebrow went up. ‘Hundred,’ she said. ‘Well, that’s about as nominal as you can get. Or did you just forget to sell the last few?’
‘Sentimental attachment. Those last hundred are like an old Premium Bond.’
‘I’m sure. Well, they’ll get you into the shareholders’ meeting, I suppose. I hear you want a chance to address the troops later.’ She ate more of the bacon roll.
‘I thought I’d get everybody together,’ Alban said, ‘before the EGM itself. Make sure we’re all rapping from the same rap sheet, you know? I mean, we won’t be, obviously, but we should at least establish the differences. And it wouldn’t just be me who gets to talk. Anybody can. You could, Kath. You could put the pro-selling argument.’
‘I don’t have your charisma, Alban,’ Aunt Kath said, more or less expressionless.
‘Well, somebody has,’ he said, ‘and I want it back.’ Aunt Kath looked at him. He smiled broadly. ‘Ex-forester humour.’
‘Really.’ Aunt Kath went back to her roll and her tea.
Alban stood up. ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it,’ he said. As he turned to go, Aunt Kath looked at her watch. ‘Three whole minutes in the kitchen and not a word about cooking the books,’ she said. ‘Well done.’
He looked back, but could only make as gracious a gesture as he could, and left.
Sophie arrived first, driven by taxi all the way from Inverness. Alban, mooching around the hall at that point and taking occasional peeks through the front doors, hoping to see the red Forester coming fast down the drive, was the first out to the taxi, struggling to control an umbrella against the squalling sheets of rain being curled round the jumbled architecture of the house and sent slamming down from a variety of directions. According to Aunt Lauren, some of the older children were supposed to be doing this umbrella-holding, bag-carrying thing, but they’d managed to make themselves scarce in the interim. Alban was so busy trying to prevent the umbrella blowing inside out while opening the taxi door at the same time that he only realised who the passenger was as she was getting out.
‘Oh, Sophie. Hi.’
‘Hello, Alban.’ Sophie was blonde and slim as ever, dressed in jeans and an ivory cashmere sweater over a pink blouse. Her hair looked perfect, her face looked unchanged from the last time he’d seen her, her skin appeared flawless and her eyes were still - thankfully, redeemingly - the same fabulous, sparkling green they always had been. ‘Thanks,’ she said as he held the umbrella over her. No kiss.
He saw her into the house - Aunt Lauren was there, doing the whole greeting thing - then returned to the taxi to get her bags. He followed Aunt Lauren as she showed Sophie to her room on the first floor.
‘Good grief, no, not a thing packed,’ Lauren said in reply to a question from Sophie as they walked along the corridor. Then Lauren seemed to stiffen and her head jerked as though she was about to look back at Alban. She said hurriedly, ‘Well, actually, no, no, that’s not true. A few things have been packed up for the move. Some, ah, old things. Precious, well, family - things of sentimental value, some of those. Ah! Here we are.’
‘Right,’ Sophie said. She stood on the threshold.
‘Bathroom is third on the left,’ Lauren told her.
Sophie looked less than impressed that her accommodation was not en suite. Alban put her bags down near the old free-standing wardrobe and turned to go while Aunt Lauren was still blushing and apologising for the weather and saying how much Win was looking forward to seeing her. Sophie had her wallet out. She started to reach into it for something, then collected herself, looked embarrassed and shot a glancing smile at Alban, who just nodded and left.
He spent the rest of the day in a similar role, still in or near the front hall, hoping to see the Forester, greeting people, helping with bags, getting to see everybody as they arrived, which was good, but feeling menial and put-upon and slightly sick all the time, telling himself he was worrying about VG, but knowing it had more to do with the presence of Sophie and the way she had treated him. Every nuance of the few minutes they had spent in each other’s company seemed to fill his thoughts, demanding attention and analysis and dissection.
She hadn’t even started to kiss him, hadn’t even thought about it. She hadn’t even shaken hands. She’d nodded to him. She’d said, ‘Hello, Alban,’ and that was all. And had she really been about to tip him? She’d had her wallet out. Why? She’d already paid the cab. Had she really - just arrived, maybe a little distracted, possibly even a little flustered (by seeing him?) - been on the brink of offering him money to say thank you for helping her with her bags? What did that say about how she felt about him subconsciously?
‘Darling! Oh, you’re so sweet!’ Leah said as he saw her into the house. He put an arm round her shoulder to keep her within the shelter of the umbrella. The wind whipped rain round their legs on the few steps to the porch and the hall.
‘Alban,’ Andy said, and - already holding a bag - gave him a one-armed hug.
Andy and Leah were followed in quick succession by most of the rest of the family: cousin Steve’s wife Tessa, their son Rune, his partner Penning and baby Hannah, sis Cory, her husband Dave and their children Lachlan and Charlotte, cousin Louise, her siste
r Rachel with her husband Mark and their children Ruthven and Foin, and Aunt Linda’s broad, booming twin Lizzie (unexpectedly, amazingly, with a man in tow, a Mr Portman, her companion, who would of course be requiring a room. Alban foresaw problems for Haydn).
Fielding arrived with Beryl and Doris after lunch.
‘Alban, dear, are we north of Aberdeen?’ was the first thing Beryl said as he helped her from the Mercedes.
‘Quite a bit north, and way west,’ Alban told her, kissing her and then Doris as he tried to keep them both dry under the same umbrella and shepherd them to the front door.
‘But not in the Arctic Circle?’ Doris asked.
‘Well, no,’ Alban said, laughing.
‘You see?’ Doris said to Beryl. ‘I told you!’
‘I never said we were in the Arctic, I said we passed an artic. An articulated lorry. A pantechnicon,’ Beryl said, sounding exasperated. ‘For goodness’ sake, we passed an Iceland lorry; that doesn’t mean we’re in bloody Iceland.’
‘But I did tell you . . .’ Doris was saying, oblivious, as Alban handed the old girls over to Lauren, gratefully.
‘Thanks, Al,’ Fielding said once the bags were out of the car and sitting in the main hall. He handed Alban the keys and turned to hug and kiss Aunt Lauren.
Fielding obviously expected Alban to park the Merc, which he duly did, shaking his head at Fielding and himself and - in his imagination - not parking the car at all but taking it north to look for any signs of red Forester estates or solo female climbers.
The umbrella finally blew inside out and then out of his hands as he exited Fielding’s car after parking it behind the outbuildings beyond the north wing. He started to chase the umbrella, then gave up as a powerful gust of wind picked it up - it was already plainly broken, two ribs badly bent - and blew it up and over the old coal store and away towards the trees lining the head of Loch Garve. He gave up on it and trudged back to the house in the rain. The side doors he tried to get back in were all locked and he ended up having to traipse all the way back round to the front door, getting drenched in the process.
Just as he got there, two people-carrier taxis arrived and disgorged a bunch of tall, well-dressed, well-groomed people. He guessed they were the Spraint execs. Aunt Lauren, Aunt Kathleen and her husband Lance, plus Gudrun the legal assistant, were out with umbrellas to meet them.
Alban - wet through, head down, trudging back to head for his shared room and a change of clothes - was hardly spared a second glance.
Dinner was full-scale but not formal; Alex the cook would have the kitchen and waiting staff of the Sloy Hotel to help him produce the dinners for the next two evenings, but for tonight he’d managed a buffet with just a couple of assistants. People chose their own places to sit at a dozen tables scattered through the length of the dining room.
The place was noisy with family members who hadn’t talked properly for years provisioning themselves with gossip and news. Alban sat with Andy and Leah, Cory and her family. He’d caught up with Cory - she was working for Apple now, very excited about stuff in the pipeline she couldn’t possibly talk about - and chatted with her husband Dave, an industrial chemist and a nice enough guy but with a sadly inexhaustible supply of stories about paints, pigments, volatiles and finishes.
‘I didn’t say anything to upset you, did I? I mean when we were talking about Irene last week,’ Andy said. He raised his glass between him and Alban. ‘You know, I probably ought not to say anything when I’ve a drink in me. I always worry I might have offended people. Bane of my life.’
‘Course not,’ Alban said. ‘Anyway, I raised the subject. I think we both needed a drink before we could face it.’
‘Perish the thought a couple of guys can talk about important emotional stuff when they’re actually sober enough to make sense of it,’ Andy said ruefully. He sighed. ‘But I still always worry I’ve offended people.’
‘You worry too much about that sort of stuff, Dad.’
‘Hmm.’ Andy sounded unconvinced.
‘Remember that time after I got back from my world trip? About a week before I went to Uni. We were sitting in the garden. Very hot. Drinking Pimm’s, and I mentioned seeing Blake in Hong Kong and how he’d said, Always look out for number one. Be selfish.’
Andy nodded. ‘Vaguely.’
‘We got to talking about how some people were selfish and some weren’t, and the difference between right-wing people and left-wing people. You said it all came down to imagination. Conservative people don’t usually have very much, so they find it hard to imagine what life is like for people who aren’t just like them. They can only empathise with people just like they are: the same sex, the same age, the same class, the same golf club or nation or race or whatever. Liberals can pretty much empathise with anybody else, no matter how different they are. It’s all to do with imagination; empathy and imagination are almost the same thing, and it’s why artists, creative people, are almost all liberals, left-leaning. Hard-headed people - business people - didn’t have that sort of imagination; it’s all directed at seeing business opportunities, identifying gaps in the market, spotting weaknesses in rivals. Blake and Win - and quite a lot of our family - were like that, you said. It was just the way they were.’
‘Did I really say all that?’ Andy asked, frowning.
‘Yes, you did,’ Alban told him. ‘The point is, it was really useful to me, it made sense of a lot of stuff I’d been puzzling over, but then you spent the next half-hour or so apologising, saying you didn’t want to criticise the family. I almost forgot what it was you said in the first place.’
Andy shrugged, grinned. ‘Sorry. Sorry for being sorry.’
Alban smiled, shook his head.
‘Anyway,’ Andy said. ‘Getting back to this thing with Beryl. Did you find out anything else?’ He drank from his glass.
‘No,’ Alban said. ‘No, I didn’t.’ He looked at the table where Win was sitting with Aunt Kathleen, Uncle Kennard and the two Spraint Corp execs and their assistants. ‘I suppose I could ask Gran.’
Andy coughed. ‘Excuse me. Yes, I suppose.’
‘Well, she was around back then, in London. She might know something.’
‘Yes, you should talk to her, I suppose. Other things on her mind this weekend, mind you. As have we all.’
‘Yeah, well, we’ve already had words this weekend. Not about that though.’
‘I’ve brought some flowers,’ Andy said quietly, turning ever so slightly away from Leah.
‘Flowers?’ Alban asked.
‘For Irene,’ Andy said, almost whispering. ‘I thought I’d take them down to where she died, maybe tomorrow morning, scatter them on the water. What do you think? Would you like to come?’
Part of Alban wanted to say, No, I’d rather do anything than come to where she died, with or without you, Andy, because it means too fucking much to me.
What he said, naturally, was, ‘Yeah, of course, Andy. Maybe after breakfast?’
‘Yeah, good idea,’ Andy said gently. ‘Good idea.’ He patted Alban’s arm.
‘Well, mister, you’d better pray there’s no God!’
Alban stared at the guy. ‘What?’ he said.
Somehow, in the drawing room after dinner, he’d got into a theological debate with this Anthony K. Fromlax guy, Vice-President, Mergers and Acquisitions, of the Spraint Corporation, Incorporated under the laws of the state of Delaware, United States of America. Even calling it a theological debate was dignifying it a little; basically they were disagreeing about the very existence of God, groups of gods and so-called higher beings in general. Tony Fromlax was a tall, muscular, lithe-looking guy of about Alban’s age with wide, enthusiastic eyes. A sharp-looking haircut ascribed a veneer of order to naturally unruly fair hair. He had a degree in physics as well as an MBA and Alban had half hoped, on being introduced to him by Win, that he’d prove to be one of those Americans who hadn’t been born again. This had proved - perversely - to be a pious hope.
&n
bsp; It wasn’t that Alban went looking for this sort of argument, just that he always seemed to get involved in them. People said something that made it obvious they’d fabricated some assumption that was completely wrong either about Alban or about the way he looked at the world and he seemed to be constitutionally incapable of letting these things go, of treating them like something embarrassing just tripped over and best ignored; he always had to turn back and pick it up, inspect it, shake it, worry it, make an issue of it, demand an explanation. In this case it had been Tony wondering aloud about where people would be worshipping come Sunday. From that had spread a whole escalating avalanche of argument, assertion, counter-assertion and nonsense.
‘Pray there’s no god? Did you hear what you—?’
‘I’m sorry for you, Alban, in your pride and your arrogance, that you can’t see that Jesus is reaching out to you, that He would be your friend, your saviour, if only you’d listen.’ Tony sat forward on his couch, hands splayed in front of him, reaching out. ‘There is no way you can be right, but even if there was, think what a terrible place the world would be without the Word of God to guide us. That’s what—’
‘Now, Tony, how are we here? This looks like it’s lively. Talking share price, yeah?’ Larry Feaguing, Senior Vice-President, Mergers and Acquisitions, clapped Tony on the shoulder and sat down by him on the couch. Feaguing was a chunky guy, not much shorter than Fromlax, about twenty years his senior, with endearingly black hair. He had a deep, serious tan that Alban already imagined was visibly fading in the mellowing light of a Scottish October. He had a deep, serious voice, too, and used it to good effect. ‘How’re you guys getting on?’ he asked. ‘Okay?’