The Steep Approach to Garbadale

by Iain Banks

  ‘Okay,’ she said. She moved to the front, keeping low, taking care to avoid stepping on the oars and rods in the bottom of the boat, swinging her legs over the midship seat and taking up her position on the little seat nubbed in across the angle of the bows, looking back once at him - they exchanged smiles - then facing forward, away from him and towards the loch and the mountains ahead.

  He’d watched the material of her jeans tighten and stretch over her trim little behind as she made the manoeuvre.

  Was this no more than it appeared to be? He didn’t know. He was happy to be with her, and she seemed to be genuinely interested in fishing, and maybe this was partly her way of letting him know they were okay now, that they could be friends, even if not especially close ones . . . Still, he’d felt surprised when she’d first suggested this little expedition, and almost instantly suspicious. He had Sophie down as one of the definite Fors, a certain Yes. She was almost certainly going to vote to sell to Spraint, even though she was employed by the US side of the family business and wasn’t guaranteed a job with Spraint if they did buy them out.

  From what Alban knew, Sophie was good at her job of Retail Liaison Officer, even if he’d never entirely worked out exactly what this job description meant. If he’d been Larry Feaguing he’d have had a word by now and made her a verbal promise she would be found a post within Spraint. Though without, of course, putting anything in writing or necessarily meaning to make good on the promise.

  Was she going to try to persuade him not to make his pitch at the meeting before the EGM? Was she going to try to get him to change what she - or whoever might have put her up to this - thought he was going to say? He looked out across the hull-slapping waves of the loch and then up at the distant, darkly towering mass of Ben More Assynt coming into view round the shoulder of a nearer hill, both peaks starting to appear as the mass of clouds lifted. Or, he thought, perhaps he was just being too suspicious.

  He thought of VG again, maybe now climbing in the dry at last. He knew exactly what she’d ask. What did he really want? What was he really attempting to achieve?

  Oh, how the hell should he know? He wanted to be happy but he didn’t even know who he wanted to be happy with, or even if he really needed somebody else around to be happy with. Why should he know? Nobody else seemed to know, or if they did, they weren’t acting on it in any obviously sensible way. He wanted peace and love and all that shit for the whole fucking world and you’d imagine that sort of stuff would be fairly near the top of everybody’s wish list, but it was all going in the other direction, descending into madness and barbarism, reverting to a mind-numbing, morality-sapping set of cruel, mutually intolerant superstitions and authoritarianisms. Stupidity and viciousness were rewarded, illegality not just tolerated but encouraged, lying profoundly worked, and torture was justified - even lauded. Meanwhile the whole world was warming up, getting ready to drown.

  Everybody should know better. Nobody did.

  Every fucker was mad, nobody paid any attention whatso-bleeding-ever to whatever was in their best interests, so how the hell was he supposed to be any better or different?

  He shifted his position on the thin cushion covering the wooden seat. The little engine revved high, wasting fuel. He turned and adjusted the throttle friction control. He turned back and watched the rear of Sophie’s head, her neat, shoulder-length blonde hair barely moving as the boat almost kept pace with the wind at their backs.

  What did she want? What was her goal?

  Maybe the girl just needed to get some quality time in. Perhaps she wanted to do some fishing and soak up some of the tranquillity of the old family estate before it was all sold off. Maybe it wasn’t even anything to do with him - with their history together - at all; perhaps it was just her being sensible, going with somebody who knew the loch rather than taking a boat out herself. On the face of it Loch Garve was no more treacherous or difficult than any other inland loch, but it would be an especially unforgiving place to get into difficulties because there was nowhere except the foot of it - the Garbadale end - to go for help; there was no other house or shelter, and no road or even forestry track on either shore, just a rough path on the north-east side which was more or less passable in a well-driven quad bike or an Argocat. Even that was probably a no-go on a day like today, with multiple fording points blocked by streams and burns in spate after all the recent rain.

  After about half an hour they made a shallow turn round the shoulder of Mullach and were out of sight of the house. A minute or two later Sophie came swivelling back towards the stern of the boat, still keeping low. Alban watched the bows rise slightly as the boat adjusted to the weight transferral. The waves had grown a little since they’d left Garbadale, partly because they’d left the lee of the trees and the shallow rise the house was built on, but mostly because of the reach becoming greater; the wind had an increasingly long stretch of water to work on, gradually pushing up fractionally taller waves. They were still going with the wind and the waves, however, and so their progress was almost stately. It would feel a bit chop-pier coming back, but the waves weren’t near breaking and the forecast was good; there shouldn’t be any drama.

  ‘Okay?’ he asked Sophie as she sat next to him, raising his voice over the sound of the outboard.

  ‘Fine.’ She leaned closer, nodded at the insulated box. ‘Want some coffee?’

  ‘Good idea.’

  They sat together on the transom seat, holding cups of coffee.

  ‘Thanks for coming with me,’ she said.

  ‘No problem; good idea. I guess we won’t be able to do this again once the place is sold. Glad you suggested it.’

  She looked back and down, frowning at his hand holding the engine’s throttle tiller. ‘Why are you wearing just one glove?’

  He shrugged. ‘I can stick this one in my pocket,’ he said, holding up his hand with the coffee cup. Not a lie, he told himself, and it saved a lot of boring explanation. They sat together within the companionable noisiness of the engine’s monotone drone for a while.

  Now she was staring at his left hand. ‘Oh my God, what happened to your little finger?’

  ‘Oh, chainsaw accident,’ he said, looking at his half-finger. ‘Few years ago.’

  ‘Jeez, Alban.’

  ‘Only a nuisance when I’m trying to get wax out my left ear.’

  ‘Thanks for sharing that,’ she said.

  ‘Welcome,’ he told her. ‘Oh. Should have checked this before we started out, but do you know how to work the engine? Just in case I fall overboard - you know, trying to land a marlin or a great white or something - or lapse into a coffee-induced coma or whatever.’

  She looked back at the engine. ‘It’s a two-stroke. There’s no little window so I guess you add the oil to the gas before you put it in the tank.’ Then she pointed as she said, ‘Starting lanyard, choke, twist throttle, throttle friction whadaya-callit -’

  ‘Okay.’ He touched her forearm. ‘You’ve passed.’

  They rinsed the cups over the side, then she went back to sit up front. He’d switched hands - and glove - once so far, and was about to do so again when he remembered an old trick.

  He took some care to make only the most minute adjustments to the tiller to keep their course straight - substituting small increments and patience for coarse inputs and quick results - and waited until the bearing the bows indicated on the mountains far ahead didn’t seem to have changed for a minute or so, then he carefully let go of the tiller and stood up, moving forward towards the widest part of the boat, feet planted as far apart as the inner hull would allow.

  Sophie felt something change in the attitude of the boat and looked back.

  Her eyes widened deliberately. ‘You going to test me on what to do if you fall overboard?’ she said.

  He shook his head. ‘If you get the engine set just right,’ he said loudly, ‘and the wind’s behaving itself, you can steer like this.’ He leaned to the right, tipping the boat a few degrees. Their headin
g started to change fractionally to starboard. He gave a big grin. ‘See?’

  ‘I see.’ She smiled broadly, too. ‘You’re showing off.’

  ‘Nah, me bum was getting sore,’ he said, gesturing.

  She nodded. ‘Well, if you are going to fall overboard, be sure to give me plenty of warning.’

  ‘Will do.’

  She turned to face the wilderness of water, hill and sky that was all that was ahead of them.

  They ate their lunch while still under way, to make more time for fishing when they stopped.

  Half an hour later they moored at the little sun-bleached, pale orange buoy floating fifty metres or so off the portion of shore between the two burns draining the north-west slope of Meall an Aonaich. The sky was almost clear of cloud, though they were in the shadow of the long western ridge leading to Ben More Assynt, so the air felt cool. The wind had dropped a little here in what was essentially a wide bay between the two mountains. Almost the only sound was of waves slapping against the clinkered planks of the boat.

  After he’d shut down the outboard, the silence had rushed in like something more than absence, like some anti-sound that was still somehow as loud as the noise it had suddenly replaced. He remembered the burglar alarm, heard from his bedroom during that summer night in Richmond, twenty years earlier. He recalled it as though it was for the last time, gently pushing it away as if it was something that he could now safely consign to the shadowy depths beneath their little boat.

  Alban closed his eyes at one point to concentrate on what he could hear. He heard the sound of Sophie’s clothes sliding over each other as she reached back and forth, arm swaying, casting. He heard the faint, rasping sound of the reel. Somewhere a seagull called, sounding plaintive and lonely and lost, unechoing.

  He opened his eyes, glanced at Sophie - she didn’t seem to have noticed him closing his eyes - and felt - even though there was a hint of sadness in there, too - oddly, almost blissfully happy.

  ‘Bit choppy for fly fishing,’ Sophie said after a few casts.

  Alban was inclined to agree. They switched to spinners, using the smaller rods, casting differently, further, reeling in smoothly.

  ‘How close do you think this vote’s going to be?’ Sophie asked him, flicking the rod back and then snapping forward, sending the little spinner up just far enough to rise above the ridge shadow and into the sunlight, making it glitter briefly before plunging first into the shade and then into the deeper darkness of the loch.

  ‘Closer than most people think,’ Alban said, reeling in with a slow, measured motion. ‘Close enough to make Spraint raise their offer.’

  Sophie glanced at him. ‘You reckon?’

  ‘If they see the way the wind’s blowing they’ll raise it before the EGM. If they’re as smart as they should be.’

  ‘They have the authority for that?’ Her voice was quiet. They were both speaking very softly now with so little other sound around them. Stuck out in the middle of a chopping loch in broad, slightly chilly daylight it gave their conversation an oddly enclosed, even intimate feeling.

  ‘Up to some unspecified point, allegedly,’ Alban said. ‘Feaguing’s senior enough to double their initial offer, I’d guess. Aunt Kath feels the same way, and Win. She insisted they send people who could negotiate on the ground rather than just some ceremonial team with a rubber stamp, a crate of bubbly and some pious words about the proud family tradition being safe in their hands. Above a certain point - which they’re not giving away, obviously - they have to phone home, but even if they seem to do that it could be a ploy. You know, like when a car salesman says he has to go and talk with his manager to discuss what you’re asking for your trade-in and just goes for a coffee or a dump instead and then comes back shaking his head and saying, sorry, if it was up to him, but, gee, his boss is such a hard-ass.’ Alban retrieved his lure, cast it again.

  Sophie nodded slowly, gathering her own small silvery spinner back in. ‘I think I’m going to vote no,’ she said.

  Alban looked at her. ‘Well, that’s a surprise. I was sure you’d be for selling.’

  ‘They’ve offered me a job,’ she told him.

  ‘Spraint.’

  ‘Yeah. Say they’ll keep me on, with promotion, more money, stock.’

  ‘You got that in writing?’

  ‘No.’ She sounded amused.

  ‘And? What? That made you change your mind? Somehow that offer was counter-productive?’

  ‘No, but it got me thinking.’

  ‘Always dangerous.’

  She grinned. ‘I realised I like what I’m doing just now. Maybe in five or ten years’ time I’d be ready to take on something like what they’re offering, but right now I’m happy enough. And in addition I don’t know that we have the right to sell out the firm when there’s another generation that might criticise us for it.’ She glanced at Alban.

  ‘Getting broody?’ he asked, making a wild guess.

  ‘It’s something I’ve thought of,’ she admitted. ‘There’s a guy I’m seeing, back home.’

  ‘Ah-ha.’ He still got this odd feeling when she said ‘home’ and meant the US.

  ‘Same guy I’ve been seeing all this time. Same guy I switched courses for, way back.’

  Ah-hah, he thought. ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘You have been patient.’ Maybe, he thought, too patient; like me.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said ruefully. ‘You’re not kidding. He’s been married, had two kids and divorced again in the meantime, but,’ she sighed, ‘we’re back together again. After all that.’

  Dear God, he thought. I knew nothing of this. What a gulf, what an ocean, what an Atlantic between us. If we are so much the sum of what we’ve done and what’s been done to us, I barely know this woman at all. Who - where - is the Sophie you think you know?

  ‘I guess we’re pretty serious,’ she said. ‘We’ve talked about marriage, kids. I’ve always been, I don’t know; unsure, but, hey,’ she glanced at him again, ‘just getting to that age, you know? Don’t want to leave it too much longer.’

  ‘I’m sure you’d make a wonderful mother,’ he told her.

  ‘Gee, thanks.’ She said it like she thought he’d meant to be sarcastic.

  ‘Seriously,’ he said.

  She looked at him again, then lifted the dripping lure from the water, swung it back, clicking the reel and casting again. The spinner headed high and struck sunlight once more, glinting briefly. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘Okay. But. So. I think I’ll vote against.’

  ‘Me and my pitiful hundred shares will be with you. Much to my surprise.’

  ‘Yeah, I think Win was surprised too.’

  ‘You told her?’

  ‘She just plain asked, dude,’ she told him. ‘Came right out with it, as though she was confused and thought I’d already told her, which I hadn’t. And I’m pretty sure she knew I hadn’t. Good acting, though. She’s a manipulative old bird, isn’t she?’

  Alban laughed. ‘Yes. Yes she is. I thought I was the only person who felt that way.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t put much past her.’

  ‘Same here.’

  ‘We’re sure nobody’s done any private deals with Spraint?’ Sophie asked.

  ‘Hard to see how they could. The family trust has first refusal on any proposed share sell.’

  ‘Okay.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘Is it true you and Fielding made up some sort of road show, drumming up support for the Anti cause?’

  ‘Yeah, at Win’s suggestion, too, apparently.’

  ‘Uh-huh. I had her down as a seller, too.’

  ‘Not that we had much effect, far as I could see,’ Alban said.

  ‘No?’

  ‘Well, not much.’ He stopped reeling in, letting his spinner sink a little. ‘Though it did occur to me,’ he said, ‘that what we were really doing was upping the price.’

  Sophie glanced at him.

  He shrugged. ‘Maybe Win does want to sell, but not at the current price. She reckoned we were rollin
g over for them too low, so she thought she’d try and up the numbers who’d vote against. The idea being that Spraint realise there’s more opposition than they were expecting so they have to offer more. Win gets her way. But what she wants is just a higher price, not outright rejection.’

  ‘Hmm.’ Sophie did not sound as impressed with this bit of vicarious Machiavellianism as Alban had hoped. ‘But you’d think she would be the one person who wanted to keep the family firm together,’ she said. ‘She’s the matriarch, this is her watch. She ought to be the guardian of the family values. And the family valuables.’

  ‘I think Win’s secretly - actually, not that secretly - an egomaniac,’ Alban said. ‘Everything has to revolve around her. Soon she’ll be dead, or so infirm she won’t be able to control the family and the firm any more, and she hates the thought of somebody else being in charge. Better to sell up, liquidate it all, dissolve it into some big corporation. So she gets to be like a bookend, founding father Henry being the other. A fitting sense of finality for her.’

  ‘Okay,’ Sophie said, nodding slowly. She seemed slightly more taken with this piece of analysis. ‘Well, I suppose.’ She looked at Alban. ‘What if it’s worked too well? What if nobody wants to sell now?’

  ‘Well, some people definitely do; Aunt Kath for one. But I’ve been doing the arithmetic and it’s tighter than anybody was expecting.’

  ‘Interesting,’ Sophie said.

  ‘Oh,’ Alban sighed, reeling in, ‘isn’t it all?’

  They were both standing up, letting their feet take their weight for a change, confident that the boat’s gentle rocking wasn’t close to tipping them overboard and used enough to the motion by now to be easy with it, casting smoothly without disturbing the boat appreciably. They’d caught a couple of slim, glistening brown trout each. They had been borderline small so they’d thrown them back.