by Iain Banks
It was an odd smile; maybe a little sad, wistful, something like that. She glanced back down the beach again. She made a single, gentle gesture; just that thing that’s not quite a laugh, when your diaphragm contracts. It raised her head and shoulders briefly, then let them fall again. There might have been a soft noise like a ‘huh’, but it was so faint that – even though the only other noise was that of the distant waves breaking – I suspect I imagined rather than heard it. I hadn’t even noticed the music had stopped.
‘Could be quite a long while,’ she said, almost dreamily. Then she lay down on her side, one arm beneath her head. Her long fair hair was dry now, and spilled around her head and over the shadowed golden skin of her arm. She stretched, yawned: catlike, completely unselfconscious. Her eyes were half open.
‘Do you want me to …?’ I nodded to one side.
‘Do I want you to what?’ she asked quietly.
‘Go,’ I said. ‘Do you want me to go?’
Her eyes opened a little further, and I was regarded, studied. ‘Why,’ she murmured, ‘do you have somewhere else you have to be?’
I laughed quietly. ‘Not as such.’
‘Do you want to go?’
I shook my head. ‘No.’
‘Then don’t.’ Her eyes closed and she nestled down under her towel and blanket. ‘Keep me company,’ she said sleepily.
I opened my mouth to speak, then her eyes were open again and she said, ‘It’s all right; not trying to seduce you.’
‘Oh,’ I said, sighing heavily but still smiling. ‘That’s a pity.’
She tutted, shook her head a fraction. ‘You guys,’ she said, laughing lightly, closing her eyes. ‘Just stop it. Here,’ she said, lifting one corner of the blanket, her eyelids flickering as though trying and failing to open again. ‘Come and keep me warm. I’ll spoon against you.’
‘What if Josh—?’
‘Ha!’ she said, quietly dismissive. ‘Wouldn’t worry about Josh.’ She sounded sleepy again. She flapped the blanket edge. ‘Come on; getting cold.’
It was probably as well her eyes were closed. My grin must have been splitting my face. I did as I’d been told and cuddled into her, under the blanket, my back against her front.
‘S’better,’ she said, on a sleepy sigh. Seconds later she was asleep, breathing rhythmically against me, her breasts a gentle pressure against my back, her arm over my waist. I had a raging erection, of course I did, which it would have been great to do something with, but, fuck it; no matter where this was going from this point on, this – right now, right here – would most assuredly do.
We woke up to a cool grey morning, and to what were probably meant to be knowing smiles, plus various yawns and stretches and a few hung-over groans.
The fire was a dead black circular scar on the empty expanse of sand, but the smell of frying bacon and the sound of sputtering eggs came from a smaller fire somebody had started near by. I’d rolled over. Ellie smiled at me.
‘Sleep okay?’ she asked, blowing some hair away from her eyes.
‘Never better,’ I lied. Now, my cock was about the only bit of me that wasn’t stiff.
‘Same here,’ she said, then sat up, flexing her arms and upper body. God, you could fall in lust with this girl’s shoulders, even before you lowered your sights a little. She glanced round at everybody else, then down at me. ‘People will talk, you know,’ she said, arching one eyebrow.
‘I should be so lucky,’ I told her. This made her laugh.
‘Thank you, Kylie.’ She moved one hand through the tawny mass of her hair, scratching idly. She raised her head, sniffing. She looked down at me again. ‘Hungry?’
‘You wouldn’t believe,’ I told her, after the tiniest of pauses, holding her gaze.
She closed one eye, regarding me suspiciously, then laughed. ‘Mm-hmm,’ she said, then unfolded herself upwards, standing. ‘Well …’ She pulled the towel around her like a skirt.
She held out one hand to me, to help me up.
Oh, you beauty, I thought.
‘I’m a fucking idiot,’ I breathed to myself when I saw Ferg and Josh coming back along the beach together. They weren’t quite holding hands, but something about the way they strolled along, either too casually or not quite casual enough, made it obvious. I’d only started to suspect when I noticed they weren’t there by the side of the fire when Ellie and I woke up.
I looked at Ellie, standing talking and laughing with one of her girlfriends by the only other four-wheel drive still left on the beach. Round her shoulders, she wore the blanket we’d slept in; there was cloud, and a chill wind off the grey sea.
I finished my eggs and bacon, wiped the plate and thanked Logan, who’d provided the breakfast. I went up to Ellie just as her pal moved off. ‘That’s the boys back,’ I told her.
She looked round, nodded. ‘So it is,’ she agreed. She held my gaze, smiled.
‘About you and Josh,’ I said, after a few moments.
‘What about me and Josh?’ she said.
‘There’s a party at Maddy Ferrie’s place tomorrow night.’
‘I know.’
‘You were … going?’
‘Yes.’
‘With Josh?’
‘He was going to pick me up.’ She looked over at him again. ‘That was the plan.’
‘Well, I wondered if I could take you? Could I pick you up? Instead?’
She nodded thoughtfully. ‘I suppose you could.’
‘D’you think that would be all right with Josh?’
She looked at Josh and Ferg as they approached. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I think that would be fine with Josh.’
‘And would that be all right with you?’ I asked, starting to become unsure whether this laid-back approach of hers was studied coolness, druggy comedown or sheer indifference.
She seemed to think about it, then she raised herself up on tiptoes and put her hand gently on my cheek. She came forward and kissed me lightly on the other cheek. ‘That would be very all right with me.’
We stood smiling slyly at each other for what felt like half a minute before Ferg’s voice rang out. ‘Gilmour! I hope you haven’t crushed, smoked, given away or lost my fucking cigarettes, you unmitigated cur. Morning, darlings.’
The first time Ellie and I actually had sex was mildly disastrous: more awkward than my very first time, nearly three years earlier, with Kat Naughton; my first, all of nineteen at the time. Lovely girl.
Married now with two kids; works in the council Planning Office. She was engaged and it was just a fling for her so it went no further but she always used to wave and say hi when our paths crossed subsequently. Anyway, that had been a breeze and a mutual laugh compared to my first fumblings with Ellie, in the dark, in my bed, one night while my parents were away.
She was tense and unsure and while she said no, she wasn’t a virgin, and there was no hint of a hymen, or blood, it was neither a joyous romping bonk-fest nor a sinuously graceful coupling of two bodies utterly meant for each other. My extensive research via the media of prose and film had led me to believe it would be one or the other. She was quiveringly tight and I came too quickly the first time, but we persevered, relaxed a bit and it got better. Still all a tad edgy, though, and in the morning she seemed almost downcast.
‘You still want to keep seeing me?’ she asked over mugs of tea in bed, not looking me in the eyes.
‘Are you completely insane?’
(I wouldn’t say this now; you always say things like this attempting reverse psychology or whatever, but now I know how insecure and even neurotic women can be, and often the more beautiful and intelligent, the more insecure and neurotic they are. Beats me – positively unfair, in fact – but there you are.)
‘I kind of fell in love with you three years ago,’ I told her. ‘I’ve been dreaming, fantasising about you ever since. I’ve wanted you for ever, El. I’m just terrified you’ll get bored with me.’
‘Now who’s insane?’ she murmured, picking
at the duvet cover, though she was smiling.
I told her about seeing her at the Lido that sun-hazy day during the summer of 2000, about how just that single head-to-the-side, hair-swinging-out gesture had captivated me utterly.
She snorted, then laughed. ‘I get water in my ears if I don’t do that,’ she told me. ‘It’s like walking around with my head underwater all day if I don’t.’
Ellie was crazily self-conscious about her looks; according to her, her entire body was just plain weird. I can’t even remember which breast she thought was bigger than the other; they were both OMG-I’m-going-to-faint beautiful and looked like a perfect matching pair to me, but to hear her talk one was a tennis ball and the other a crash helmet. There was a cute little crease across the end of one of her gorgeous light-brown nipples but as far as she was concerned it was the Grand Canyon.
We were a week’s worth of sex into our relationship before I got to go down on her, for goodness’ sake; she was convinced her body was a feast of freakishness below the waist.
‘But this is beautiful!’ I told her, the first time I was allowed to get down there in daylight and take a look. It was also the first time it occurred to me that this is why girls like frills and frilly things; they have their own frilliness, built in. ‘Seriously; beautiful.’
‘Oh, God!’ she said, slapping a hand over her eyes, patently mortified.
‘What?’
‘Engineering and Philosophy.’
‘I didn’t even know you could do that. Anywhere.’
Ellie looked thoughtful. ‘I think strings might have been pulled,’ she admitted. I looked at her. She shrugged. ‘Not directly Dad; John Ancraime.’
‘Honestly?’ I said. ‘Engineering and Philosophy? This isn’t a wind-up?’
A tiny frown puckered between her eyebrows. ‘Of course not.’
I whistled. ‘Best of luck with that.’ I wiped some spray off my face.
We were sailing; Ellie had a wee dinghy you could squeeze two people on to. We’d trailed it down from the house to the slip at the end of the Promenade and pushed the thing through light surf, wetsuited up. Dinghies were sort of weirdly old school, I reckoned; everybody else I knew who was aquatically sporty was into surfing, windsurfing, kite-surfing and jet-skis, but Ellie liked old-fashioned sailing, and admittedly it was something we could do together. This mostly meant getting cold and wet together, but it was, well, bracing.
‘Yeah, it’s a challenge,’ Ellie agreed. She had her hair up under a peaked cap, a few strands blowing loose. She looked great. She squinted at the breeze-swollen sail, then at the ruffled patterns the gusts of wind were pressing onto the waters all around us. ‘Going about,’ she announced.
We started bum-shuffling, hauling on some ropes and slackening off others.
Engineering and Philosophy. She was crazy. But, then, why not? Ellie always got what she wanted, always eased through life, accepting her familial, financial and intellectual advantages as her natural right. And if securing courses in the two subjects that most intrigued her at the time took some academic string-pulling via her dad and our local toffs, well, that was cool, even amusing.
At school she had got used to being top of the class in whatever subjects she could be bothered to put any effort into, but she never really studied and consistently underperformed in exams. Her teachers despaired; she was a star pupil but still, somehow, a disappointment. She got A grades, but then was told she could do better. She developed a mindset that found learning rather fun but being tested on it just a hassle; she did better than almost anybody else but still people seemed dissatisfied with her. What was the matter with them?
Nevertheless, when the effort involved in ignoring this chorus of supposedly supportive criticism grew greater and more tedious than that associated with the studying required, she had finally pulled up her metaphorical socks and done pretty well in her last year. All the same, it had been a turbulent time for all concerned; Ellie had never really developed the skill of giving in gracefully.
Even now, when she had Oxbridge-level grades, she’d settled for Aberdeen because home was handily close and so many of her friends and the people she was already familiar with – in other words, people already in awe of her, people who required no fresh exertion – were going there. This meant that, as far as she was concerned, it had the best social scene.
Meanwhile I was going to become a great artist. But just doing the classical stuff – painting and sculpting – wasn’t going to be enough. I was going to draw up plans for buildings, create their interiors with colour and light, design their furniture, fabrics and fittings, and specify everything down to the last teaspoon, doorstop and fire extinguisher. And then I wanted to stage events and place my own art in the spaces I’d created. Plus I wanted to be head of a studio full of other visionary people dedicated to expressing my unstoppable torrent of creativity in other niche artistic media and more technically challenging forms requiring specialist knowledge that it wouldn’t be worth my fabulously valuable time to master (even then I had Ferg down as my go-to man for games design, an honour he seemed oddly casual about, as though he didn’t fully appreciate the accolade). Not to mention I anticipated overseeing an entire social and artistic scene based around some sort of astounding hybrid of club, studio, theatre, gallery, publishing house, virtual environment and image production facility, probably in New York or London initially, before I franchised the concept.
I wanted to be a cross between Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Jeff Koons and Andy Warhol, and make all three of them look a little second-rate, a tad wanting in ambition as well as talent. I was going to take the artistic world by storm; it didn’t know what was coming, but it – all of humanity, eventually, because I would make art matter again in a way it hadn’t for far too long – would thank me later.
Dad told me to get a grip. Mum said that all sounded fantastic, incredible, and art school would help me decide what I wanted to focus on (like she hadn’t been listening either), but Ellie listened to my dreams and told me there was probably not a single thing I couldn’t do if I put my mind to it. I think that was how she phrased it.
Naturally, I heard what I wanted to hear, as you do.
I got a talking-to. I’d known it was coming. It was Fraser and Norrie’s birthday, the first time I’d been invited to the family home as Ellie’s boyfriend, about a month after the beach party.
‘Come and see Fraser’s new wagon,’ I was told, so Murdo, Callum, Fraser and Norrie and I all trooped through the kitchen and utility and into the hangar-like triple garage to admire this horrendous but very shiny jacked-up piece of Americana. It was a Ford Grand-something-or-another, I think. Norrie’s birthday present was a speedboat he’d wreck against a harbour wall four months later. We were clutching drinks. I had a can of something soft because Ellie and I were going to another party later and it was my turn to drive. The guys all had cans of beer.
I’d already gathered that my choice of beverage had produced mixed feelings in the Murston lads:
‘No drinkin?’
‘Driving.’
‘Eh?’
‘Not just me; Ellie’ll be in the motor too.’
‘Aw. Right. Aye, okay then.’
‘Ya poff.’
(Fraser / me. With Norrie right at the end.)
‘Here, have a sit; feel the leather,’ Murdo said, opening one of the monster’s rear doors.
We all got in. I was sat in the middle in the back, surrounded by prime Murstonian beef. They closed all the doors and turned to me: Fraser and Callum in the back bracketing me, Murdo and Norrie in the front, glaring over the head restraints. The thing wasn’t even right-hand drive.
Fraser had been driving a chipped and winged Nissan GT-R until recently. He’d knocked down and killed a teenager two years earlier, on a slip road onto the bypass. He got off the careless driving charge – he’d been straight and just under the legal alcohol limit, while the kid he’d hit had been high as a kite – but then the victim�
��s family had started a civil suit against him. They were new to the area and weren’t to know any better. Some people expected the worst, even when the family lost the court case, but all Fraser did was have the GT-R fully repaired except for the big dent in the bonnet where the kid’s head had hit. He kept that car with its fatal impact crater in the metalwork as a sort of grisly souvenir for nearly two years, and claimed he drove down the street where the kid had lived – and her family still did – every day, just on principle.
‘Now then, Stewart,’ Murdo said.
He was the eldest, the spokesman and reputedly the smartest of the four. He had a short, well-kept beard, fair-haired. Callum had designer stubble and the two younger brothers, both redheads, were clean shaven. I wondered if there was some sort of hierarchy of age-related hirsuteness in the Murston family.
‘We thought we should let you know, the four of us, how we feel about our sister an that, eh?’ Murdo said, to a sort of mini Murston Mexican Wave of nods. ‘Callum here’s put in a good word for you,’ he told me. A good word? I thought. After me cultivating the numpty’s unrewarding friendship for almost the whole of High School? Thanks.
‘An Grandpa,’ Fraser said to Murdo. ‘Him too.’
Murdo nodded. ‘Aye, an Grandpa. He speaks well of you, an that’s all good as far as it goes, eh? But you need to know what she means to this family, aye?’
Murdo looked round at the others. They all nodded again. All four were wearing new jeans – with what looked suspiciously like ironed-in creases – and padded tartan shirts over different designer tees. The tartan shirts were pretty bulky. It was like being intimidated by a convention of Highland hotel sofas.
‘You better no be, like, f … havin fuckin sex wi her,’ Norrie said, frowning mightily at me.
‘Shut up, Norrie,’ Callum said.
Murdo sighed. ‘Get real, Norrie.’
‘Aye, gie yersel peace,’ Fraser chipped in.
Norrie dealt with this concerted disapproval by intensifying his frown.
‘Guys,’ I said, ‘I love the lassie; have for years. Last thing I want—’