The Steep Approach to Garbadale

by Iain Banks

  He thought of Neil McBride’s children and grandchildren and the world they would be bequeathed. It was, arguably, in a bit of a mess. He remembered talking with Sophie, back in the garden at Lydcombe, about how the world their generation was inheriting appeared - at the time - to be in just as big a mess. Sometimes it seemed that all that ever went on was each new generation trying to fix the mistakes and problems caused by the previous one - not to mention those accumulated via still earlier forebears. And this never really seemed to be possible, not as a finished result. It always seemed to be required and it certainly was always worth trying, but if you set your heart on fully achieving such a goal, you were bound to be disappointed.

  He recalled Verushka talking about some people seemingly being forever in search of the East Pole. She meant that they had simply misunderstood how things worked. It was as though, having heard of the South Pole and the North Pole, they assumed there must be a West Pole and an East Pole too, and so set off confidently expecting to find one or other of them, never knowing they were inevitably destined to fail.

  Some hopes and ambitions were manifest only as a direction, not a destination. Maybe the trick was to realise you were involved in a process, not aiming at a completely achievable end result, and accept that, but travel hopefully anyway.

  The trouble was that so many people seemed to feel a need for certainty, for clear paths leading to set objectives with tickable goal-boxes, for the assuredly do-able with guaranteed happiness or fulfilment or enlightenment apparently promised as a result. And so many other people were determined to offer them just those things, through schemes or programmes or sets of rules or institutions or tribalistic, other-excluding, difference-fearing cliques, but always through some sort of faith; whether it was faith in the person peddling their patent fix or whether it was faith in a full-blown religion or whatever secular belief system had partially replaced such primitive creeds and was currently in vogue - once Marxism, now the market.

  Always flocks, always priests.

  He shook his head.

  Still: to travel hopefully.

  He looked down at the house, waiting for some sort of movement there, for the glint of sun on moving glass or just one barely discernible speck millimetring its way across the roads or paths or lawns, but he saw nothing for the perhaps five or ten minutes that he watched. For all the life he knew the place contained, there was no sign of it in this early afternoon, the distance and the scale of things reducing whatever might be happening down there to a cheerful triviality.

  He hesitated before the descent. There were two obvious approaches to the house from here. The slow, sensible route was a narrow, occasionally indistinct path describing a series of gentle zigzags down the steep grass slope to his right. The quick way meant a scramble round some car-sized boulders at the side of the cliff beneath him and then a fun but frantic bit of scree-running, following the giant fan of fallen grey stones all the way down to the dark mass of spruce trees making up the south plantation.

  Scree-running was exciting but dangerous; there was always the chance of a trip or a sprain or even getting hit by a faster-moving rock dislodged from further up. There was even a degree of guilt involved - you were, after all, helping to wear away the landscape. He’d only ever done it twice. Both occasions had been here, once with his dad about twenty years earlier, once with Neil McBride maybe five years ago. He knew that the prudent course - especially given that he was alone - was to take the shallow, zigzag route, but the sheer rattling, flailing madness of taking the scree approach had its own wild attraction.

  Whatever; while he’d been pondering his choice of route, he’d had an idea. An idea that might winkle some sort of truth out of Win, if she had any to surrender. He’d have a nap this afternoon, sleep on it that way, then see what happened at Win’s big party in the evening.

  He turned away from the shallow path, pulled the strap of the old fishing bag as tight as he could across his shoulder, then rounded the side of the cliff and clambered past the giant boulders. He looked down the steep grey pitch of scree towards the treeline, the gardens and the house, then with a whoop jumped on to the slope, surrendering himself to it, running down, heart-hammering, legs pumping, feet sinking into the loose, tearing grey surface, sliding in a barely controlled, tipped-back stagger, limbs falling into the imposed, shared rhythm of the stones all bustling and tumbling along with him, dropping so fast he could feel his ears pop.

  Breathless, laughing, legs quivering, he arrived at the trees in a rattle of stones within a couple of minutes of jumping on to the great grey slope of fractured rock.

  ‘Brig-a-fuckin’-doon, yeah right,’ Larry Feaguing said. ‘I’m telling you, man, this place is the crock of shit at the brownbow’s end.’

  ‘Maybe we should buy the estate, too,’ Fromlax suggested. He’d estimated that there was no further point in protesting at his boss’s expletives, given that the last time he had, a couple of drinks ago, Feaguing had fixed him with an unsympathetic look and told him to pull at least one of his fingers out of his ass. Larry was displeased that the board had agreed to buy the Wopuld Group for two hundred million.

  He’d done a pretty good job of disguising his displeasure at the dinner for the old grandmother’s eightieth birthday, when he’d clinked his glass and stood up after the other speeches had been completed and told them the sale had been agreed, subject to some negotiation over the cash/stock mix and the usual lawyerly picking-over, blah-de-blah-de-blah (great had been the cheer, manifold the rejoicing, sincere the praise and shockingly unrestrained the consumption of alcohol thereafter), but Fromlax knew Feaguing was privately annoyed at having failed to secure the purchase for less than the maximum amount he’d been allowed.

  There was even a hint that some of the board felt that as Larry had been granted authority to just say yes at that price he had rather been wasting their time coming back to them to double-check. So now Feaguing in turn felt that the board had let him down by refusing to play ball and say no, at least initially, to the two hundred mill price, depriving him of any lever with which to prise the price downwards. They were surrendering but he would be the one looking weak.

  ‘What?’ Larry asked. ‘Buy what?’

  ‘Buy the estate; buy this place,’ Fromlax said, leaning close to his boss so that nobody else could hear. Given the amount of talking and laughing going on, and the ceilidh band playing enthusiastically on the dais at one end of the ballroom, this was probably an unnecessary precaution. ‘It, uh, is for sale.’

  Feaguing looked at him as though he was mad. ‘Buy Garbage-dale. Yeah, okay; you suggest that to the board,’ he said, turning away and shaking his head. His expression flowed into a professional smile as two of the Wopuld women - aunt whatever and niece blank - came up to ask them to dance something called a Dashing White Sergeant. They had no choice but to agree, though, to Fromlax, all these whirling, prancing, Scottish group dances seemed to have been explicitly designed to make foreigners who were ignorant of the complicated steps and bewilderingly intricate movements look and feel clumsy and stupid. They were swept up into the orderly riot on the dance floor once again.

  ‘What were you guys on, that time in Singapore, remember?’ cousin Steve, the container port crane guy, asked Fielding. They were standing at the temporary bar at the far end of the ballroom from the band, sweating after an especially spirited dance. They were both wearing formal Highland gear, each dressed in the full Prince Charlie outfit, kilts and sporrans and everything else - save their jackets, which had been sweatily abandoned after the first energetic dance. Fielding had forgotten how warm this attire could make a person. Not all the Wopuld males had chosen to go down this Caledonian wedding route - about a third were in normal black tie - but the family had purchased a lairdship or something when Henry had bought the estate, they had their own tartan, and the men were therefore entitled to wear heavy, pleated skirts, shoes with girlie laces criss-crossed up their thick white socks - socks that were stoc
king-length if you rolled them right out, frankly - and sport wee (technical term) knives. Apparently.

  ‘Singapore?’ Fielding pretended to have to think about this. He shook his head, went to drink some of his champagne - there was a lot of champagne being drunk tonight, as well as copious amounts of whisky - then stopped and wagged one finger. ‘Oh, yes, that.’ He drank. He fixed Steve with a look. ‘You could tell, could you?’

  ‘Looked like more than just drink and dodgy prawns,’ Steve said, nodding.

  ‘You’d have to ask Alban,’ Fielding said. ‘I can’t remember.’

  ‘But you were ripped?’

  ‘Off our tits,’ Fielding agreed.

  ‘Where were you today?’ Haydn asked Alban, plonking himself down at the table and nearly spilling the flute of champagne he’d brought with him. Haydn was also dressed in full Highland regalia, and had for some time been in the zone of alcohol saturation where he no longer felt in any way self-conscious sporting such dress. Alban wore a kilty outfit too, though it was less formal: sensible shoes, plain leather sporran, a toned-down version of the family’s slightly technicolour tartan and one of those pull-on shirts with big droopy sleeves and laces at the collar.

  ‘I was walking,’ Alban told Haydn.

  ‘What, on the road?’

  ‘No, in the hills.’

  ‘What, just for fun?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘We thought you’d stormed off home in a fuss or something,’ Haydn told him. ‘There was talk of search parties. Your man Neil Mc-thingy was all set to call Mountain Rescue.’

  ‘I know. Apparently the kids were having a paper plane competition from the gallery across the hall to see who could get a plane to fly outside through the main doors. The note I left got made into a dart or something and was later discovered on the gravel under a Range Rover.’

  ‘Ah-hah.’ Haydn looked woozily around the assembly of bouncing, dancing people. ‘Everybody seems very happy,’ he observed.

  ‘Should think so too,’ Alban told him. ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘Bloody ecstatic.’

  ‘You going to stay with the firm once it’s sold?’

  ‘They want me to,’ Haydn said, looking out at the swirling mass of people as though hypnotised. ‘Mean moving to the States.’

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  ‘Manhattan?’ Haydn drank from his flute. ‘San Francisco?’

  ‘There are worse places.’

  ‘You bet.’ He looked at Alban. ‘What would you do? In my situation? ’

  ‘Me? Oh, I wouldn’t move to the States now any more than I’d have moved to Germany in the mid-Thirties. But that’s just me. If I was you, I’d probably go. You’re not Muslim, which is the new Jewish, so you’ll probably be safe.’

  Haydn stared one-eyed at him, then remembered binocular vision. ‘Win’s right. You really take this stuff to heart, don’t you?’

  ‘I know. It’s a failing, frankly.’

  ‘And people say you and Win never agree on anything.’

  ‘Are we all going to be horribly rich?’ Doris asked Beryl, raising her voice over the noise of the band. They were sitting at the table they shared with Andy and Leah, Alban, and Cory and her husband and children. Not that any of the children had actually sat down or been there much; they all seemed to be playing games in the games room, computer games in the television room or off exploring parts of the house that hadn’t been open until tonight, now thrown wide to all and sundry in some excess of celebration.

  ‘What’s that, dear?’ Beryl asked.

  ‘Are we all going to be horribly rich?’ Doris repeated.

  ‘Well, I am, dear,’ Beryl said. ‘You don’t have any shares, old girl.’

  ‘That’s rather beastly of you.’

  Beryl patted Doris’s hand. ‘We shall both be rich, my sweet. Though I was not aware of feeling any great lack in our lives as they have been, ah, ah, what’s the word? Heretofore. Yes, heretofore.’

  Doris nodded slowly. She was thinking, obviously. ‘I think,’ she said firmly, ‘that we ought to buy a racehorse.’

  Beryl, paused with her drink raised halfway to her lips, looked moderately startled, then said, ‘Do you know? I think that’s a jolly good idea.’

  There is a pattern to the patterned dances. After every two or three or four, the band plays a slow waltz or foxtrot to let people cool down, sit down or just have a chance to dance as a couple rather than as a company.

  Alban danced gentle, delicate waltzes with Beryl and then Doris and later with Win, because it was her birthday after all.

  ‘So, we got an extra twenty million, thanks to Kathleen,’ Win pointed out. Held, even at the prim remove dictated by the dance, Win seemed almost unbearably slight and fragile. Alban, sporran on one hip to avoid prodding one’s dancing partner in unfortunate places, was very aware of his height and strength compared to this little old woman who was getting littler with every year now, compressing and concentrating like something being reduced on a stove or a fruit air-drying. He had, of course, absolutely no illusions regarding this in any way symbolising Win’s grip on life - or on the family - weakening.

  ‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘There you are. I’d have had us settling for a paltry one hundred and eighty million US dollars and reducing us all to penury. Thank goodness Aunt Kathleen was there to save us.’

  ‘It’s rather more than ten per cent of a difference, Alban. Hardly trivial or worthy of that sarcasm you’re obviously so proud of gracing us with.’

  Win sounded a little drunk, Alban decided. She rarely let herself achieve this degree of inebriation, in public anyway. Well, he told himself, it was her party, and the whole family had just been handed a gigantic present in return for the family firm. Win was quitting the house and estate and the overseer-ship of the company while still pretty much in possession of all her marbles and - he seriously suspected - on something very close indeed to what her own terms had been all along. Always good to celebrate when one had outlasted all rivals, seen off all challengers and achieved what one had long desired. Who wouldn’t be triumphalist and feel justified in having a few sherbets?

  ‘And I’m sure everybody will be rather more than ten per cent happier than they would have been otherwise,’ Alban agreed.

  ‘Well, at any rate,’ Win said, in a sleepy-sounding, little-old-lady voice that instantly warned Alban something acidic was on its way, ‘I’m pleased that you were able to play your part.’ Win smiled sweetly.

  He didn’t doubt he had been meant to feel insulted. ‘Happy to have been of service,’ he told her.

  They danced on. I think I might try my plan, he thought.

  Alban danced with Gudrun Selves, the legal exec with the cool name and the pretty wonderful body. She had short, blue-black hair, was the same height as him in her heels, wore a little black number and had great legs. She was much in demand and happily uninterested in talking about law.

  He danced with Leah, who was dressed in a rather matronly blue gown she wouldn’t suit for at least another ten years and who was quite tipsy in a vague, happy-but-slightly-sad-too kind of way, sorry to see the family firm being sold off but pleased that everybody else seemed so elated. She told him they should have insisted that Verushka attend the party; he looked happy when he was with her. He said he was glad to hear that.

  He danced with Sophie, resplendent in a silvery sheath dress like a glitter ball stretched over her body. He asked her for a favour.

  She pulled back as they danced. ‘Maybe we should sit down,’ she said.

  ‘Maybe we should,’ he agreed. He steered her to a vacant table not far from where Win sat with her little circle of family elders and willing functionaries. He sat so that he could see Win over Sophie’s shoulder. She wasn’t looking at Sophie and him, but he had the impression they hadn’t gone unnoticed.

  ‘First, I’d better give you some background,’ he said.

  ‘No,’ Sophie told him, leaning towards him with a grin. ‘First you
should get me some more champagne.’

  ‘Okay.’

  He thought she seemed quite merry already but he went to the bar and brought back a couple of glasses. He leaned in and kissed her cheek as he put the glasses down, seeing Win from the corner of his eye.

  Sophie’s eyes narrowed. He hesitated as he was about to sit down, then extended his free hand and said, ‘Actually, let’s sit somewhere else.’

  ‘What the hell are you playing at, Alban?’ Sophie asked, following him to the far end of the room and another empty table near a corner of the ballroom not far from the band.

  Once they were sat down he said, ‘Sophie, I want you to give Win the impression you love me.’

  She laughed. ‘After everything?’

  ‘After everything,’ he said. ‘Let me give you the background. May I?’

  ‘Background away,’ Sophie said, waving one hand and drinking her champagne.

  He told her something of Irene’s troubling, un- or semi-conscious words in front of Beryl in the hospital, his admittedly half-hearted attempts to find out more, and the way Win had expressed herself the day before when he’d confronted her in her sitting room over tea and toast.

  ‘Yeah,’ Sophie said, frowning fractionally. ‘I heard about this honey. Is it true it’s like cocaine?’

  ‘Sophie, are you listening to what I’m telling you?’

  ‘I’m very sorry about your mother,’ she said, suddenly serious again. ‘Why do I have to pretend to Win that I love you?’

  ‘Because of what she asked me yesterday,’ he explained. ‘I got the impression, thinking about it later, that if I’d told her I still thought we had a future together then she might have spilled the beans. Like an idiot, I told the truth and so she clammed up.’