The Steep Approach to Garbadale

by Iain Banks

  He saw. He understood. The world and his life seemed to be spinning away from him, but he was beginning to understand. He swallowed a few times until he felt able to speak.

  ‘Who else knows?’ he asked. His voice sounded hollow, even to him.

  ‘Kennard and Kathleen,’ Win said. ‘They say they haven’t told anybody else.’

  He glanced towards where Lauren sat, near the doors.

  ‘Not Lauren,’ Win said. ‘She never needed to know. She does what I ask her because she trusts me.’

  He sat looking away into the darkness for a while. He felt like he was going to black out again. He was searching for flaws, running it all through his head, trying to spot something, anything, that didn’t fit.

  It didn’t work. Everything fitted together. Guilt, attempted suicide, actual suicide, the disproportionate hysteria that had greeted him and Sophie having sex, even what had been the sheer unexpected blissfulness of his night with Kalpana - and the fact that she insisted on using condoms, of course - even some of the things Blake had said to him in Hong Kong.

  Oh dear fucking God. He so did not want any of this to be true, but it made more sense than anything else he could think of. Oh dear holy shit.

  ‘I’ll arrange for the DNA test reports to be sent to you,’ Win said. ‘Oh; and you can have back all your love-letters and poetry - all the things you sent to Sophie. Lauren was under instructions to send them to me. I’m sorry,’ she told him. ‘If it’s any comfort, I haven’t read them. They were never opened.’

  ‘Be careful what you wish for,’ he said quietly, more to himself than to her.

  ‘Hmm?’ Win said. ‘Yes. Well.’

  He tried to summon up some hatred for Win, or even feel some resentment towards her. How dare she manipulate his life and Sophie’s like this? And yet, she’d done what she thought was the right thing. There might still have been other ways - he’d have to think about this - but once the family had decided to keep the whole thing secret he supposed there hadn’t been much choice for her. He couldn’t blame her. He felt he ought to, somehow, but he couldn’t.

  Blake, he thought. Blake?

  Andy and Leah would always be his parents, always be his mum and dad. But now he had another father as well as an extra mother. Well, he had long been half used to this. It was symmetrical if nothing else.

  ‘Please say you won’t . . .’ Win began. She stopped and tried again. ‘That you and Sophie won’t—’

  ‘No-no,’ he said quickly. He held up one hand. ‘No, don’t worry about that. Forget all about that.’

  Win let out what sounded like a long-held breath. ‘Well,’ she said, sighing deeply. ‘That’s enough from me. I’m tired out. This has been an eventful day. You’ll excuse me.’

  ‘Let me,’ he said, seeing her reach for her stick, resting against the edge of the fireplace. He helped her up as Lauren came up to them, walking the length of the drawing room.

  ‘Bedtime?’ she said brightly.

  ‘I think so,’ Win said.

  ‘Thank you, Alban,’ Aunt Lauren said, letting Win take one arm. ‘Might see you later.’

  ‘Yeah, sure.’

  ‘Don’t forget to put the guard on the fire, all right?’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Good night for now.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘good night.’ He stood by the fire and watched the two women go. After a few seconds he said, ‘Thank you.’

  They both stopped. Win turned a fraction, looked at him for a moment, then just nodded. She and Lauren continued to the doors and exited. He looked down at the table and the glass she’d left. There was some whisky left in it. He picked it up and drank it. He put the fireguard in front of the fire in case it sparked.

  He sat down again and stayed for a while by the fire.

  He’s with her as she comes down from her room, down the wide, gleaming staircase under the tall, south-facing window. She walks across the creaking parquet of the main hall towards the kitchen, and he’s there as she turns into the short corridor that leads past the gunroom and the inside log store and the drying room to the cloakroom, and he watches as she stops and chooses what to wear to go outside.

  Irene is dressed in brown Clark’s shoes, a pair of white socks, jeans, a brown blouse and an old white roll-neck jumper. White M&S underwear. No watch or rings or other jewellery. No cash, chequebook, credit cards or any form of identification or written material.

  He watches her choose the long dark coat with the poacher’s pockets. It’s huge and almost black, its original dark green-brown weathered and worn and grimed over decades on the estate to something close to the darkness of the brown-black water in a deep loch. He stands in the gloom, surrounded by the pervasive smell of wax. Rain patters on the shallow, high-set windows. He watches her go to the coat and take it off the wooden peg.

  The coat is too big for her, drowning her; she has to double back the cuffs of the sleeves twice. The shoulders droop and the hem reaches to within millimetres of the flagstones. She rubs her hands over the waxy rectangles of the flapped external pockets and looks inside at the poacher’s pockets.

  Then she goes through the outside door of the room, into the shining grey of the early afternoon. The door swings shut behind her, leaving him there, silent.

  ‘Alban? Alban?’ He’s being shaken awake, somebody waggling his right elbow.

  He opens his eyes.

  He’s sitting by the fire in the drawing room at Garbadale, at night. Something had happened, he knew. Something momentous, awful. Then he remembers.

  Blake? Blake?

  ‘Alban? Alban?’ The person shaking his arm is Chay, cousin Claire’s partner.

  He shakes himself, tries to wake up. ‘Sorry. Chay; hi. What?’

  ‘Phone call for you.’

  ‘What? Phone?’

  ‘Yeah. For you.’

  Alban looks at his watch. Ten past four in the morning. A phone call for him, here?

  Oh no, not - VG.

  ‘Who—?’ he starts to say, then coughs. He struggles to his feet, leg muscles complaining.

  Oh please no, not VG, not if it was the police, not if it was the Mountain Rescue people or a hospital. Please, not her, not that, not after what he’d just learned. He couldn’t take it. He tries to tell himself it had all been a dream but he knows it wasn’t.

  Please not VG. Please not.

  ‘Who is it?’ he asks Chay at last.

  ‘Dunno. Some guy from Hong Kong.’

  He follows Chay down the corridor to the office of Neil Durril, the house manager. They pass the ballroom, where a disco is playing, not especially loudly but with lots of flashing lights. Looks like about half the people are still up, though only a dozen or so are dancing, caught in frozen strobed poses in the walking glimpse he gets.

  At least it’s not VG, at least it’s not about her. Just time difference, that’s all.

  ‘Cheers,’ he says, sitting down behind Neil D’s desk and lifting the receiver resting on the surface. The office is small: filing cabinets, computer, photocopier, box files everywhere. Chay closes the door behind him, leaving Alban alone.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Alban?’ comes the voice. There is something flat about the way the word is said that sends a shiver down his spine.

  ‘Blake?’ he says. He can feel himself starting to choke up. This is so pathetic, but he can’t help it. He tries to pull himself together all the same.

  ‘Hello, Alban. I’m told you’ve . . . You know the truth.’

  ‘Ah, well, yeah, I guess.’ He doesn’t know what to say. He’s assuming that somebody - Lauren? Win herself? - has phoned Blake so they’re all working from the same set of assumptions, but he’s not sure. How can he be sure?

  ‘I just wanted to say how sorry I am,’ Blake says. His voice is reasonably clear, though Alban can tell he’s using a mobile.

  ‘That’s . . . That’s all right. Ah, obviously I’m a bit, well, still in shock, but—’

  ‘I alw
ays wanted you to know, and I never wanted you to know, do you understand?’

  ‘Yeah, I guess I do.’

  ‘It’s all too late, though, I think. It’s a relief that you know, but it is unbearable as well. Don’t think badly of me. I’ve spent all my life since regretting what happened. I’m very glad I met you. You’ll - oh, sorry, hold on . . .’ his voice disappears and Alban can hear the sort of broken, close-up rubbing noises you hear when people press their phones against their clothes or try to hold their phone tight to their shoulder.

  ‘Still there?’

  ‘Still here,’ Alban says.

  ‘The little coolie chaps are all gone. Nearly lunch-time. Lots of people and traffic . . .’

  ‘Look, ah, Blake,’ Alban says, ‘I suppose - I mean, I think - we ought to meet up. If you like I can—’

  ‘Sorry,’ Blake says. Alban can hear his breath, loud against the microphone of the mobile. ‘I’m afraid I don’t think I could bear that. I’m so sorry.’ He makes a strange noise as though he’s just hurt himself. There’s a noise like a sigh, then the breaking, rubbing noise again. The noise of the sigh begins to sound like the breeze, like the wind.

  ‘Blake?’

  ‘Sorry,’ Blake says, loudly. The wind howls across his voice. ‘You’ll be all right.’ The sound of the wind rises to a scream, and perhaps is one.

  Alban starts to realise what might be happening. The hair on the back of his neck rises, then that on his scalp.

  ‘Blake?’ he shouts.

  ‘—orry, son.’

  Then just the noise of the wind.

  Then a thud then nothing.

  10

  Who’d have thought I’d end up with Big Mifty? Life is bizarre to the max sometimes, I’m telling you. The weans still miss their dad a bit (fuck knows why mind you on account of the fact the bastard used to knock seven bells out of them), but they’ve taken to me and the older one, Moselle, is starting to call me Daddy, which I don’t mind telling you is a bit freaky but also gives me the choke, quite frankly, and, seriously, like, I’d do anything for those kids.

  So anyway. We’ve just went to Al’s place and come back after a highly convivial evening, thank you very much. Have to say, what a house. Still in Perth like, obviously, but one of those posh one’s on the far side of the river from the Inch - you know, the big long green bit like a park - just ten minutes walk from the city centre and posh as feck. Seems we’re welcome any time, even the weans. And we can bring pals. House rule’s are a wee number’s okay but no cunt allowed liable to shoot up on the premises. Bit severe, maybe, in some ways of looking at it, but I suppose the guy has his posh neighbours to think of.

  Met the girlfriend. Big Al’s, I mean. Highly fucken tasty, and real nice. Big Mifty thought she was a bit up herself at first but it’s just she speaks a bit hoity - well, Al does too a bit, to be fair - but they had a chat over a game of snooker and subsequent to this the Big M decided the Verushkoid is actually pretty cool. Uses a lot of big words and talks over your head a bit, but she’s not trying to impress, that’s just how she speaks. You canny blame a body for that.

  Anyway, the blessed Al of Ban obviously has the total dotes for her and it was great seeing the man with a smile on his face, because that’s what he has when she’s around.

  He’s away a lot in Glasgow, at hers, and you’d think the way they get on and are always laughing together and touching each other and such like and generally behaving like young lover’s dream that they’d do the decent thing and get shacked up the-gether, but apparently not. Quite happy with the current arrangement, we’re told. Nothing weird as folk, sure enough.

  So, the man’s doing well. Relative or two died and left him pots of money (we always kind of knew he was a toff, though a nice one though but).

  Plus he’s related to those Wopulds that have that computer game ‘Empire’ which I used to play with Burb before his games machine got wheeched. Big Al even thought of changing his name to Wopuld, I mean like his second name, his sir-name, which would be a bit of a strange thing to do you’d think, good Scotch name, McGill, for goodnes’s sake, but that was knocked on the head too and he’s stuck with McGill. Think so too, what would his ma and pa have thought? (Met them one time I was out walking the dogs and stopped in for a cup of tea at Alban’s place - Nice couple.)

  Anyways, the guy is casting around for something to do and hasn’t quite found it yet, but I’m sure he’ll think of something. Currently talking about getting a place with lots of trees and a loch somewhere a bit west of here but not too far aways to start up one of those Outward Bound type places for disadvantaged city kids or something, which sounds like a heap of trouble to be putting yourself in the way of (and he’s trying to rope yours truly in on it as well, which must make me as daft as him as apparently I’ve said yes - Oh feck).

  Anyway, but; we’ll see.