by Iain Banks
‘And what is the truth again?’ Sophie asked, leaning one champagne-twiddling arm along the table, brows creased in a pretty frown.
‘That you were my first, adolescent, love, that I’ll always think fondly of you - always worship you, I told her - but that was all.’
‘All? That sounds like quite a lot.’ Sophie sounded wary. ‘This isn’t all just some roundabout way of trying to get back into my,’ she cast her gaze ceilingwards and muttered, ‘be polite,’ then looked into his eyes again and said, ‘affections, is it?’
He put his hand on his chest. ‘I swear. Nothing like that. It’s all about trying to prise some information out of Win.’
‘Promise?’
‘Promise.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Seriously.’
‘You sure?’
‘Absolutely. Trust me; I’m a man.’
When they’d both stopped laughing, Sophie leaned closer and said, ‘So, what do I have to do?’
Alban spotted Aunt Lauren drifting past not far away, not looking at them. He leaned in still closer to his cousin. He could smell her perfume, heady and warm and intense. ‘Just, at some point, get talking to Win,’ he told her. ‘Give her the impression you think I’m rather wonderful, you’ve decided maybe we were wrong to stay apart all these years; you want to see more of me, maybe give us another chance.’
‘You know,’ Sophie said, frowning, leaning so close to him that they were almost nose to nose - Alban could still just about make out Aunt Lauren in the background - ‘if this is a complicated seduction technique,’ she whispered, ‘it’s not working, not going to work, and it’s basically doomed.’
‘Fully aware of that, cuz.’
‘Good,’ Sophie said, winking slowly. She pulled back and took up her champagne glass again. She raised her flute. ‘To being fully aware.’
‘Fully aware,’ he said, clinking. They drained their glasses and got up to complete their dance, catching only the end of the waltz, then joined the same group for some up-tempo, insanely energetic Strip the Willow and Gay Gordons floor-bashing before finally having a whole slow dance together, all of this being agreed to help convince Win that what Sophie was seemingly about to let slip was actually plausible.
They parted, he for a pee, she to get a very large glass of water from the bar and then call at the court of Win.
After visiting the loo he went through the main hall and stood outside the front doors for a while, just to get some fresh air. It wasn’t very smoky in the ballroom - few people seemed to smoke these days - but it was surprisingly hot for a room with such a high ceiling. He’d been hoping to see stars out here, but the night was dark and a very fine rain was starting to fall. The windows of both wings of the house were fully lit and a couple of floodlights high on the main frontage bathed the various cars and other vehicles in a sharp, hard light the gently falling drizzle did little to soften.
He caught a whiff of tobacco smoke, heard the small crunching noise of a foot on gravel. He saw Tony Fromlax appearing from round the side of one of the Range Rovers. ‘Evening,’ Alban said.
‘Oh, hi,’ Fromlax said.
‘I remember the old days,’ Alban said. ‘People used to sneak out for a quick joint. Now it’s cigarettes that are socially unacceptable.’
‘Yeah, well, my last vice,’ Fromlax said, looking decidedly embarrassed.
‘Your secret is safe with me.’
Fromlax held up and then holstered a mobile phone. ‘Calling my brother, too.’
‘Yeah, the reception’s not the best here.’
‘I call him every day if I can. He’s in Iraq.’
‘Army?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I hope he comes home safely.’
‘Well, we all do. But there’s a job to be done first.’
‘You’re right. The profits of Halliburton and Bechtel have to be protected.’
Fromlax looked down at the stones on the drive, then back up at Alban. ‘Don’t you despair sometimes, Mr McGill, being so cynical?’
‘Don’t you despair? Always getting it wrong?’
‘We’re avenging what was done to us and we’re trying to give these people a chance for a better life. We have the right to do one and the moral obligation to do the other. I don’t understand how you can find anything wrong in that.’
‘The Iraqi state had nothing to do with nine-eleven, if that’s what you mean. Just nothing. And if you want to give “these people” a chance of a better life, get the hell out of their country. Stop interfering.’ Alban could see Fromlax was about to reply, but he just kept on talking; warming to his theme if you were being polite, or just having got to a straw/camel’s back tipping-point of extreme impatience with naïve Americans if you were being honest. ‘Jesus,’ he said, ‘you’re constantly making fresh mistakes to compensate for the mistakes you made before, aren’t you? You don’t like the left-wing nationalists elected to power in Iran so you stage a coup and put the Shah in charge, then get all upset and surprised when it turns out the Iranians don’t like unelected US-supported despots and so the mullahs take over; you turn a blind eye to the barbaric, medieval bastards of Saudi Arabia for decades because they happen to be sitting on a desert full of oil and you don’t bother your sweet asses they’re using their slice of the profits to promote their dingbat fundamentalist Wahhabiism across the whole Muslim world, then you have the cheek to be stunned with fucking amazement when it’s cockpits full of Saudi zealots who fly into your buildings on nine-eleven; you back Saddam Hussein against the mullahs in Iran and can’t see how that might go wrong; you back the mujahideen in Afghanistan and you get Bin Laden; you back—’
‘Yeah? And who would, who do you—?’
‘No, wait a fucking minute,’ Alban said, taking a step forward and pointing at Fromlax’s chest. ‘I’m not finished yet. The point is you’re still doing it. Now you’re backing Musharraf in Pakistan because he might help you catch Bin Laden. All in the cause of democracy, only Musharraf had to stage a coup to get where he is; he’s an unelected despot too, a military dictator except his state already has nukes and the opposition is getting even more fundamentalist on his ass specifically because you guys support him.’ Alban took a step back, put his weight on his back foot and inspected Fromlax over crossed arms. ‘Well, gee, what could possibly fucking go wrong with that scenario?’
Fromlax shook his head. He held up both hands, palms flat. ‘Mr McGill,’ he said, looking at the pebbles in front of Alban’s feet, ‘I’m here on your territory, your estate, your family home, just trying to negotiate the best deal we can for all of us. I think you’re a very aggressive and disturbed individual and I would just like to return inside now and I would ask you not to stand in my way.’
Alban looked at the man for a moment. He shook his head fractionally, then stepped aside, taking another step back to completely clear the doorway.
‘Mr Fromlax?’ he said, just before the American disappeared into the hall. The other man turned to face him, looking wary. ‘I was for the war, too, initially,’ Alban told him. ‘My girl and I nearly split up because of it. I had my reasons, and I could argue them, but do you know what she said to me? I’ll quote: “Trying to justify this war is like trying to justify rape; you can dress your excuses up as fancy as you like, but in the end you should just damn well be ashamed of yourself.” I spent a year - in denial, basically - trying to find an answer to that, but I never did. How about you?’
Fromlax stared into his eyes for a moment or two, then shook his head and went back into the house.
It took Alban another five minutes standing in the open air to calm himself, to get his breathing back to normal and let his heart rate subside.
Finally he took a deep breath and went back in.
When he returned to the ballroom - more mad dashing around as whole great gyrating circles of whirling people danced the Eightsome Reel - he was met by Aunt Lauren.
‘Lauren,’ he said. ‘You dancing?�
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‘Perhaps later,’ Lauren said, taking his arm. ‘Win would like to speak to you,’ she said.
‘Excellent,’ he said. ‘Bring her on.’
‘She’s in the drawing room,’ Lauren told him, and they turned for the doors again. ‘Alban, she does seem rather upset.’
‘Really?’ he said. Obviously my night for upsetting people, he thought.
‘Yes, it’s very . . . She was in such a good mood. Well, of course she should be, shouldn’t she?’ Lauren said as they walked down the hall to the drawing room.
‘Birthday,’ Alban agreed. ‘Big birthday. And all that money. Did she like my card?’
‘I’m sure she did.’ They were at the double doors into the drawing room. Lauren opened them. The place was mostly dark, just a couple of small table lamps illuminating one long wall each, and the fire - banked, flameless - producing a red glow at the far end. The room appeared empty of people until Alban made out the small figure taking up less than the whole of one of the winged seats by the fireside. ‘There she is,’ Lauren whispered. ‘I’ll be here,’ she said quietly, indicating a seat by a table to the side of the doors. Alban left her there and walked to where Win was waiting.
The old woman was staring into the shining spaces in the banked-up blackness of the fire; a tiny landscape of little red and yellow caves puncturing a hill of fine dross. Deep red light reflected from the metal coal scuttle to one side of the hearth and made Win’s thin grey hair look rosy, like a pink lace skullcap.
‘Win,’ he said. ‘Hi.’ He sat down opposite her.
She took a moment before she deigned to look at him. There was a glass of whisky on the table at her side. She looked into his eyes for some time. Then she glanced up the room to where Lauren was sitting, well out of earshot. She raised her glass and drank a little. ‘I understand you and Sophie have rediscovered something we all thought was long gone.’
‘You might say that,’ he said. He wondered exactly how Sophie had expressed what he’d asked her to put across. He’d have liked to have had a word with her first, but Lauren had intercepted him.
Win put her glass down on the table a little unsteadily, watching her hand do this as though it belonged to somebody else. ‘You really think you might have a future together?’
‘It might be worth a try,’ he said, trying to sound unconcerned, even happy. ‘I’ll always love her, Win; I told you that. I thought she felt quite differently, but, as you’ve obviously heard, apparently not. We might have a chance of finding some happiness together. That can’t be so terrible, can it?’
‘Yes, it can,’ Win said, still looking at her own hand, which was holding the glass as though securing it to the table. She looked up at him again. ‘It can’t happen, Alban. It can’t be allowed to happen. I won’t let it happen.’
He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, Win, but you can’t really stop us.’
She looked at him and he saw, to his astonishment, that she was crying. A couple of tears had filled her eyes, glinting in the firelight. One tear began to flow down the side of her nose. She either somehow hadn’t noticed or didn’t care because she made no attempt to wipe the tears away.
‘Will you, please, just take my word that this can’t happen?’
‘No,’ he said, as softly as he could. Why the hell was she crying? Jesus, he’d dreamed of reducing the old bat to tears for a couple of decades but now that she was actually blubbing in front of him he felt awkward and disturbed and just wanted her to stop. Still, this was what he’d planned, wasn’t it? ‘No, I’m afraid you can’t stop us this time, Win. We’re both adults. We’ll take this as far as we please and there’s not a great deal you can do to get in our way.’
Win nodded. One of the tears had reached the end of her nose and hung there, bobbing as she nodded, a tiny droplet reflecting the firelight. He wanted her to wipe it away, or he wanted to do it himself. Could you get so old and insensitive that you didn’t know you were crying and couldn’t feel there was a teardrop hanging off your nose?
‘The one thing you and Sophie can never do is have children,’ Win said quietly.
He frowned. He allowed a small sort of part-laugh into his breath as he said, ‘Well, Win, we may be getting a little ahead of ourselves here, but I think we’ll be the judges of that.’
He opened his sporran. He had a handkerchief in here. He’d offer it to her; anything to get rid of that damn stupid tear hanging like snot off the old girl’s nose. She was probably leaving it there as a prop, as a piece of stage management. A lot of men were completely useless in the face of a woman crying. He wasn’t one of them.
‘The reason that you can’t have children with Sophie is that you two are more closely related than you know, Alban.’
He was still looking in his sporran for the handkerchief. He looked up. ‘What?’ he asked.
‘Your father - Andrew, Andrew McGill - is not your biological father,’ Win told him, her voice small and tired-sounding.
He was aware of having frozen. One hand held the sporran open, the other was poised inside. What? What had she just said?
‘They’ve both been good parents to you, Alban, but neither of them is your real parent. Not Leah - you know that. But not Andrew either.’
His hands were shaking. He put them together on his lap, clasped them. ‘So who the hell is then?’ he asked.
‘Blake is,’ Win said, her voice going out like a sigh between them. ‘Blake. He’s your real father, your biological father.’
‘What?’ he exclaimed. ‘Blake?’
‘Please keep your voice down,’ Win said, seeming to collapse in on herself. She reached for the glass of whisky again but her hand didn’t seem to be able to lift it. She looked down at it, seemingly forgetting about him.
‘Blake?’ he said, sitting forward. ‘That’s—’ he began, then sat back again. Blake? Blake was his fucking father? That was insane. He sat forward once more. ‘How? But he—are you saying—? So is Irene—?’
‘Irene was your mother. Blake is your father.’ Win sounded infinitely tired. She continued looking at the hand, seemingly trying and failing to lift her whisky glass. ‘They were lovers, very briefly, in London, after she’d met Andrew. I wish I could tell you it was rape, which might sound like a terrible thing to say, but . . . Nevertheless. It wasn’t, as far as we know. Blake didn’t rape his own sister, he seduced her. She was at least partially willing, at the time. Though she did come to regret it.’ She looked up into his eyes. ‘Well, obviously.’
That bit came out strongly. Her voice found some extra strength for that. He shivered, even in the heat of the fire, head swimming as he suddenly saw his recurring dream again. Gone these last few weeks, not even disturbing his sleep while he’d been staying here at Garbadale - he’d been worried that it would - now it flash-backed through him. Irene taking the coat from the cloakroom and walking out of the house, ignoring his dream-self, leaving him, walking down through the gardens to the dark loch and collecting stones as she went and walking out into the waters and drowning.
‘That’s crazy,’ he heard himself tell her. ‘You can’t know that.’
‘It’s the real reason Blake was thrown out of the family and the firm. It’s why we exiled him, why he fetched up in Hong Kong. He wasn’t embezzling anything, but he was guilty of incest. The money that went missing was the money we gave him to start a new life out there. Our accountants redated the books. They understood.’
‘But Andy—’ he began, hearing a weird roaring noise in his ears. Jeez, and now he was getting tunnel vision; he might be about to black out. This was madness. This couldn’t be true. He just didn’t believe it. Apart from anything else, Andy had said Irene was still a virgin when they first went to bed . . . But that didn’t mean anything. Win had just said they became lovers after Irene and Andy met. But it still couldn’t be true.
‘For God’s sake, Alban,’ Win said, sounding angry now, though her voice was still frail, ‘that’s why Irene tried to kill hersel
f in London. That’s why she walked out in front of that bus.’ Win had tipped forwards in her seat and now sat, shaking slightly, her fierce, sharp little gaze directed straight at him. ‘Just the shame would be sufficient, you might think, but as though that wasn’t enough she was terrified she was carrying some inbred monster. Don’t you understand? ’ Win fell back into the seat. ‘Then you were born and at least you were healthy and whole, but the guilt was still there. Andy married her knowing it was - knowing you were - somebody else’s. As far as I know she never told him who the real father was. I’d suggest you don’t tell him either.’
He sat up in his seat, tried to control his breathing. He was not going to do anything as ridiculous as faint. This was nonsense, impossible, absurd. This was just an evil old woman trying anything to stop him being happy for some sick reason of her own. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he told her.
‘Well, you will,’ Win said, finally succeeding in grasping her whisky glass and bringing it carefully to her lips. ‘You will be prepared to believe a DNA test, I take it?’ she said, and drank.
Christ.
‘I suppose so. Yes. Yeah, I’ll believe it. Just tell me when and where I’ll have to—’
‘Oh, it’s already been done,’ Win said, with a kind of tired contempt.
‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘You went to see Haydn in Paris that time, remember?’
Paris. Haydn. His special-agent-for-the-firm days, the night out in Paris and the beautiful - oh, fuck.
He stared at her. Something in the fire collapsed and a new cave of fire was revealed, sending sparks flying up into the darkness in an orange curve and causing a few brief flames to lick against the remaining scree slope of crushed coal. His mouth was open. He swallowed, cleared his throat and said, ‘Are you -?’
‘I don’t know what name the girl used,’ Win said. ‘I do know she was one of the most expensive whores in Paris.’ Win put her glass down and smiled thinly. ‘If I am going to invade a chap’s privacy, at least give me credit for doing my damnedest to spoil him as it’s done.’ The small smile remained, wavering only slightly while she said, ‘A sample was procured from Blake in a similar fashion. It was worth it to know, and the technology had become available.’ She looked down at the fire, expression sad again. ‘Personally, despite all of what one might call the circumstantial evidence, and two confessions, I always hoped your mother had just got her dates wrong and Andrew really was your father. I suspect he’s always hoped that too. I’d even hoped that Irene had been more promiscuous, and there was a third party involved.’ She looked up at him again. ‘No such luck, I’m afraid. Blake, and his sister, Irene, are your parents. You are very lucky not to show any signs of inbreeding, Alban. But, do you see? The chances of two first cousins producing a child with some sign of inbreeding are about one in four. You’re related to Sophie twice - as her first cousin, twice over. So the chances are at least fifty-fifty that any child of yours would be deformed or, well, just inbred in some fashion. And that, my dear,’ Win said, with another great, deep sigh, ‘is why we reacted the way we did when we discovered you in flagrante in the garden at Lydcombe. As though being first cousins and under-age was not enough.’