Stonemouth

by Iain Banks

  And the girls definitely got all the looks. Ellie and I were always roughly in sync as we grew up and the changes that made a woman out of the long-limbed girl who first took my breath away just seemed natural, somehow, or at least unexceptional; all the girls in our class and those around us were pupating into these dazzling butterflies back then and Ellie was no different, even if she was the most exotic of them all. Grier was seventeen when I skipped town but still gangly, one of those rare girls who resists maturity instead of trying to adopt it when they’re still twelve. But blossomed now, though, for sure. You can tell, even within the bulky jacket; something of a looker.

  There was a rumour a couple of years after I left that she’d become a model, which I just dismissed at the time, or thought had become garbled and really applied to Ellie – Ellie you could always believe would be a model or a film star or something – but looking at the kid sister now, it’s credible. Yeah, well, some lucky man, and all that.

  ‘Yeah, just walking,’ I tell her, ‘I left the town, just kept on going—’

  ‘Recent habits die hard,’ she says quietly, with a small affirmative nod, almost before I register what she’s said.

  ‘—and I suppose I’m sort of heading for the … the main forest car park. Call my folks for a lift if I can get reception.’

  ‘I’m parked there; I’ll give you a lift.’

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Sure I’m sure,’ she says. Sure I’m sure: that’s a new one. Used to always be posi-tive-ly.

  ‘Fair enough.’

  She slips her arm through mine like it’s the most natural thing in the world and we head diagonally back across the beach, northwest. She walks easily by my side, stride for stride. Her boots look like riding boots, though from the trail of her footsteps we’re retracing, they have serious grips. She’s looking down at the sand, or the trail, seemingly intent.

  ‘Back for Grandpa Joe’s funeral, huh?’ she asks.

  ‘Yeah. Special dispensation from your old man.’

  She’s silent for a bit. ‘That you done your time, you think?’

  ‘Doubt it. Saw your dad yesterday.’

  ‘Brave, foolish: delete as,’ she mutters, not looking at me.

  ‘He seemed quite happy I’d only be here till Tuesday.’

  ‘Tuesday,’ she repeats, still intent on the sand or her earlier tracks. A glance. ‘You well?’

  ‘Yup. You?’

  ‘Yup.’ I am being impersonated. She steals another glance. ‘Doing okay?’

  ‘Yup. Still lighting buildings. You?’

  ‘Still option D.’

  ‘Option D?’

  ‘There’s always an option D. Option D: all of the above?’

  ‘What’s the “all”?’

  ‘This and that. Stuff. Things.’ I feel her shrug.

  ‘Could you be a little more vague?’ I ask her, stealing one of Ferg’s lines from last night.

  ‘Certainly. How vague would you like?’

  ‘Actually, no; that was about right.’ I pull on her arm. ‘What are you doing these days? Or is it, like, classified?’

  ‘Sort of a photographer’s assistant, I guess,’ she says, sounding thoughtful. ‘Get in front of the lens now and again.’

  ‘So you are a model?’

  She puts her head back and I can tell she’s rolling her eyes. ‘No,’ she says, extending the word the way a teacher dealing with a slightly dim pupil might. ‘Not as a career; just helping out when needed? You know: like in a porn shoot when the lead man’s not quite up to performing right then and they get the cameraman to do the money shot. That sort of thing.’

  ‘Whoa! You’re doing that sort of—’

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘Not that sort of modelling. Though not for the want of offers. Or moral … what do you call them? Scruples?’

  ‘Scruples.’

  ‘Screw-pulls, focus pulls,’ she says, toying with the sounds. ‘I’m a trainee photographer; that sound better? And I’ve been in a few videos.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Really. And not those sort of videos, either. Music, mostly. And I might be interested in films. Like, acting? Depends, though.’ She skips; unforced, just like a five-year-old. ‘Photography thing could work out, but the place to be really is running things: modelling agency, photo agency, casting agency. Thinking about an agency that bridges, like, all those?’ She glances at me again. ‘That’s long term. That’s where I’m aiming to be.’

  ‘Hey, good for you,’ I tell her, genuinely impressed.

  She smiles a big, beautiful smile. Then she looks away. She does another little skip, but it seems lesser this time, half-hearted. She brings her camera round, one-handed, fiddles with it, lets it fall again. ‘You going to see Ellie?’

  ‘I suppose. Maybe. She’ll be at the funeral, won’t she? She is here?’ I ask, suddenly worried. ‘She’s not abroad or—’

  ‘She’s here.’

  ‘Well, we’ll both be at the funeral, I guess. Whether I’ll be allowed to speak to her—’

  ‘You’re both adults, you know,’ she informs me crisply.

  I glance at her. Told off by the kid. Oh well, had to happen.

  ‘Yeah, but it’s not quite that simple, is it? There’s your dad.’

  ‘Yeah,’ she breathes. ‘There’s our dad.’ She goes quiet and we walk in silence for a while, the line of low dunes angling closer, the forest dark behind them. A few other people are visible, further north along the beach; dogs race and spring around them. ‘Do you hate him?’ she asks. ‘Dad; my dad, Donnie; do you hate him?’

  I blow a breath out. ‘Hate? I don’t know. That’s a … That’s quite a big … I used to get on with him … I’m frightened of him,’ I admit to her. ‘Him and your brothers. I wish what happened hadn’t happened. I wish they didn’t hate me, that’s what I feel, I guess.’ I look at her but she’s not looking back. ‘We’ll never be friends, but I can see he’s got his… point of view. I did something that hurt Ellie and hurt the family, hurt him.’

  ‘I meant more about him being a gangster.’ She comes almost to a stop, pirouettes while still holding my arm and performs a sort of compact bow. ‘Or crime lord, if you prefer,’ she says primly, falling back into step.

  I give a little whistle. The ‘G’ word is one that we tend not to use very much in the Toun. Technically it’s the truth, I suppose, but the way things get run in Stonemouth, between the Murston and the MacAvett families on two sides, and the cops on the other, means there isn’t much in the way of obvious gangster activity; not so as you’d notice, anyway. A pretty stable place, really. Enviably low knife crime, no shootings for years and while drugs are as easy to get here as they are anywhere, they’re better controlled than in most cities or big towns. Harder to buy shit here than almost anywhere else in Britain, if you’re a kid. Of course it means the cops are – again, technically – totally corrupt, but what the hey; peace comes at a price. The system is profoundly fucked up, but it works.

  ‘There are worse,’ I say, eventually. Though it sounds like a cop-out, in a strange way.

  ‘You ever hear of a man called Sean McKeddie Sungster?’ Grier asks suddenly.

  ‘Rings a bell,’ I tell her. ‘Can’t think—’

  ‘Paedophile. In Dartmoor or Brixham or—’

  ‘Brixton.’

  ‘Eh?’ she says, glancing at me. ‘Well, wherever. English prison.’

  ‘The kiddie-fiddler that lost an earlobe?’

  ‘Yeah. Everybody’s heard that story.’

  ‘Why, isn’t it true?’

  ‘It’s true, far as I know,’ Grier says. ‘Told he can’t ever come back here, not even for his mum or dad’s funeral or anything.’

  ‘Huh,’ I say. I’m not wanting to pursue any connections with my own case here.

  ‘And the whole town knows this story?’ she says. ‘And even the people that think Dad’s a disgusting repulsive crook and should be put away for life think that’s a good thing, that’s cool. He di
d the right thing.’

  I shrug. ‘People will tend to think that,’ I offer, feeling lame. ‘I guess.’ (Lamer still.) ‘It’s their kids—’

  ‘Yeah, but even paedophiles have to live somewhere.’ Grier sounds grim. ‘When he gets out, now he’ll go somewhere nobody knows him at all.’

  ‘But there’s a register, and—’

  She pulls her arm out from mine and steps ahead, turning to face me, her arms crossed as she keeps pace with me, walking backwards. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean.’ I hold my hands up. ‘Grier, I’m not.’

  She shrugs, looks like she’s about to lift her camera again but then doesn’t. She smiles. God, that’s a pretty face. Then the smile’s gone again. She purses her lips, fiddles with the camera once more. She’s still walking backwards. ‘You want me to fix up a meeting between you and Ellie?’ she asks.

  ‘What are we? Mafia crime lords?’

  She laughs. ‘Yeah, but do you?’

  I shake my head. ‘I don’t know about that,’ I tell her. Of course I want to see Ellie, but involving Grier doesn’t seem like so great an idea.

  ‘I could,’ she tells me. ‘If you want me to.’

  I nod, indicating behind her. ‘You’re really confident you’re not just about to fall over a tree trunk, or’ – I lean out to one side, looking around her – ‘a big orange buoy sitting in its own little pool of water?’

  Grier is not fooled. ‘Yuss,’ she says, eyelids fluttering, ‘I am, amn’t I?’

  I scrunch my face up slowly, knitting my brows, narrowing my eyes and stretching my mouth out tight to either side, as though afraid to watch what is about to happen, but she still doesn’t turn round.

  We walk like this for a few more moments. ‘Don’t pretend you’ve memorised every bit of wrecked tree on this beach,’ I tell her.

  She shrugs, grins, keeps walking backwards.

  ‘Seriously,’ I say, glancing round behind her again and using one hand to indicate she should head slightly to the right. ‘You could really hurt yourself if you fell over one of these big ones with the branches or the roots sticking out all over the place.’

  She still looks unperturbed, but after a few more paces turns the camera on, takes off the lens cap, rests the lens on her shoulder, pointing behind, and clicks.

  ‘That’s cheating,’ I tell her as she brings the camera forward to look at the photo she’s just taken.

  ‘Yup,’ she says. She turns, swings forward, takes my arm again.

  ‘How is Ellie anyway?’

  ‘She is okay anyway,’ Grier tells me as we reach the forest car park. She walks up to a BMW X5 and plips it open.

  ‘This thing your dad’s?’ I ask. It’s a bit bling.

  Grier shrugs. ‘Dunno. Family fleet car, kinda.’

  Her camera goes into a custom bag with various other lenses and photo paraphernalia. My phone vibrated a minute ago to let me know it’s back online and has texts and missed calls. A text from Dad says ARRANGED YOU CAN GO SEE MIKE MAC THIS AFT. He isn’t really shouting; his texts always come like that. I suppose I’d better go; visiting Don without seeing Mike Mac probably breaks some protocols or something.

  Grier takes off her hat, flings it into the back seat and ruffles her hair, which is short and fair and looks natural. I wonder when that happened. This is the first time in a decade I’ve seen her when her hair hasn’t been dyed, or styled to look like Ellie’s. She looks sort of boyish, but good.

  Then she looks at me with one of those sudden pause-looks Grier’s been using since she was about thirteen. It’s the sort of look that makes you think, Did I say something wrong? or, Has she just thought of something really disturbing?

  ‘I’m going to see Grandpa,’ she tells me, ‘want to come?’

  ‘Um, where is he?’

  ‘Geddon’s,’ she says. ‘Lying in state.’

  Geddon’s is the oldest funeral company in town. If I’d really thought about it, I’d have guessed his body would be there.

  ‘Yeah,’ I tell her. ‘Yeah, I’d – okay.’

  We bounce and wobble over tree roots to the strip of tarmac through the forest that leads to the main road.

  I met Joe when I was walking in the hills, before I got to know the rest of the adult Murstons, before I ever talked to Ellie beyond the odd, grunted, embarrassed hi when our paths crossed, infrequently.

  Joe must have been in his seventies then; he was one of those thick-bodied men who’s obviously been fit and hard all his life, and who still has a sort of dense-looking frame even in old age. He was stiff with arthritis and he carried his barrel chest and sizeable belly before him like a backpack worn the wrong way round. He always had an old-fashioned wooden walking stick with him; mostly he used it to poke at interesting things he found lying on the ground, and to thrash at nettles. He said he’d fallen into a load of nettles when he’d been a bairn, and still held a grudge. I don’t know; he might have been joking.

  Anyway, he liked to walk his pair of fat, slow, elderly Border collies up in the same hills and forest I tended to wander around in, though the collies kind of just plodded along behind him and never ran about or chased after things. Generally they looked as though they’d much rather be curled up on a rug in front of a fire or in a patch of sunlight in the house.

  I was sixteen and I’d recently bought a moped, like just about every boy in my class who could afford to and hadn’t been forbidden by their parents. Scared myself on it a couple of times; never told Mum and Dad. Once I got over the novelty of whirling through the local wee roads and lanes, and making an expedition down the old coast road to Aberdeen, I used it mostly for heading for the hills and then going walking.

  I liked hill walking because it got you away from everything and everybody and it was healthier than being on the bike. Other kids in my class were already getting gym memberships for birthdays and Xmas but I thought being out in the open air was less regimented, less controlled. Years later, in London, I held out for nearly two years before I joined a gym, and gave in then purely because it was almost the only way to stay fit without choking on traffic fumes.

  I’d just struggled the hard, steep way up to the top of a wee hill in the forests above Easter Pilter when I first bumped into Joe in what must have been the summer of ’01; he’d come up the easy way and was sitting taking the sun with his back against the summit cairn, the two still-panting collies lying flopped round his feet. He wore baggy, worn corduroy trousers somewhere between dark green and brown and an even baggier green jumper with a hole in one elbow. The dogs looked up at me with milky eyes but didn’t raise their heads off their feet.

  ‘Mornin,’ the old guy said.

  ‘Aye,’ I said.

  Usually I avoided other people in the hills, where I could, without making it obvious. As I had just got to the top of the steep grass-and-boulder slope, though, there was nowhere else to go, and anyway I needed to catch my breath. I stood facing away from him, looking at the view. Beyond the treed ridges and tumbled, grassy hills near by, Stonemouth was just visible to the east, the sea a blue-grey presence beyond.

  ‘Bonny, eh?’ the old guy said.

  ‘Aye,’ I said. Then I felt I was being too monosyllabic, like some rubbish teenager. ‘Yeah, it is bonny, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’re a Toun boy, aye?’ he asked.

  I turned and looked at him. ‘Aye,’ I said.

  ‘Accent,’ he said, tapping a large, round and quite red nose. Not that I thought I’d looked surprised or anything.

  ‘Yourself ?’ I asked.

  ‘Aye. Frae so fur back ah doot yir faither wiz burn.’

  From so far back he doubted my father had been born. Joe certainly talked like an old geezer, though, as I learned, he only really put it on like that when he was playing up to some image of age or parochialism he wanted to poke fun at.

  I sort of laughed.

  ‘Ye no stoapin?’ he asked.

  ‘Um, no,’ I said. He didn’t look like a weirdo or a
paedophile or anything, and even if he was I’d be able to outrun him, but I just felt uncomfortable. ‘Well, better be going,’ I said.

  Joe nodded. ‘Wouldne want tae keep ye,’ he said. ‘Mind how ye go, now.’

  ‘Aye. Nice to meet you,’ I said. Though this wasn’t really true. I walked off, the easy way. I felt vaguely annoyed with myself, though I wasn’t sure why. Awkward meeting.

  As I started to head home, I took a forest track a bit too fast on my moped, whacked the sump or something and the bike bled a trickle of oil onto the narrow single-track back to the main road. I found out about the wee trickle of oil when I took a corner – not going fast at all – and the rear wheel just seemed to go out from under the bike. I skidded, tipped onto the tarmac and was scraped across the surface, with the bike pirouetting alongside, until I hit the grass and pine-needle verge and came to a stop. The bike lay ticking beside me, bleeding oil.

  I got up, shaking a bit. Ripped my good jeans. Torn my right boot above the ankle. Ripped the stuffing out of my parka. Helmet looked a bit scraped. No blood or broken bones, though. I went for my phone but it had been in a pocket ripped open by my slide along the road. I found it on the grass, but the screen was dead and it wasn’t even powering up.

  I was still wondering what to do and how exactly to break this to my mum and dad when an ancient blue Volvo estate came humming along the road. It drew to a stop and it was the same old guy. The two collies, slightly livelier now, were standing panting in the rear, looking at me through their cloudy eyes, moderately interested. The old guy leaned over, wound the window down.

  ‘Ye have a spill, son, aye?’

  ‘Aye.’

  He shooed the collies to one side and helped me manhandle the bike into the back of the estate. Actually I helped him; he was stronger than me. The collies didn’t appreciate sharing their space with the now dry-sumped bike, but settled down when they realised a few whines and some hangdog looks weren’t going to change matters. The old guy offered his hand as we were about to leave.

  ‘Joe,’ he said, as we shook.

  ‘Stewart.’

  ‘Fine Scoatish name. Whereaboots in the Toun ye wantin?’