by Iain Banks
Now it was a few days later and I’d been summoned to the highly prestigious Olness Golf Club – home of a course worthy of being mentioned in the same veneratingly hushed breath as Carnoustie, Troon, Muirfield and even the hallowed Old Course – to Meet People.
‘Stewart! Here you are,’ Mike Mac said, coming up, pumping my hand and leading me back towards the dining room. ‘Didn’t realise you were here. Come on, come and meet people. Hope you brought a good appetite. You not got a drink yet? Dearie me. We’ll soon fix that.’
We were in a private dining room off the main one.
Fuck me, I was being introduced to the Chief Constable for the whole region, a brace of town councillors and local businessmen, and our MEP. I’d heard of these people, I’d seen them on TV. The Chief Constable looked entirely comfortable out of uniform.
I had no idea what I was doing there. They talked about holidays just past or planned, fishing quotas, trying to encourage planning applications from supermarkets other than Tesco, investments, fly-fishing beats, the next Ryder cup, Donald Trump, the placing of speed cameras and the latest travails of Aberdeen (the football club, not the city).
They all seemed like friends but not friends; there was a sort of polite wariness mixed in with the bonhomie, a reserve that accompanied all the urbane good-chappery. However, they were articulate, intelligent people, with that gloss of power it’s hard not to feel a little excited by. They were quite sure of themselves and they weren’t bad company, especially as we worked our way through the selection of specially chosen wines. Olness Golf Club had a sommelier! Who knew? (I was probably being terribly naive.)
Sitting in a sort of upmarket version of a snug bar afterwards, I got to talk to the Chief Constable, then our MEP, Alan Lounds. He was very smooth. The Chief Constable had been pretty smooth, but Alan the Member of the European Parliament was smoother still. Apart from anything else he had the sort of deep, resonant, perfectly modulated voice you could imagine women swooning over, the sort of voice you just wanted to listen to, having it poured over you, wallowing in it. A voice so seductive it scarcely mattered what he was actually saying with it.
Technically Alan was an Independent; mostly he voted with the centre left or centre right, depending. Independent politicians are something of a tradition up here; I think we resent the idea of the people we vote for having any loyalty to a party that might compromise their responsibility to us.
He and I got to talking, over some more single malts, forming our own little subcommittee slightly apart from the rest of the guys.
‘Quite a family you’re marrying into,’ Alan said (I’d been told to call him Alan. ‘Call me Alan,’ – that’s what he’d said).
‘Really just marrying the girl, to be honest, Alan.’
‘Hmm.’ Alan smiled and tipped his head just so. I got the impression I’d just said something perfectly charming but completely wrong. Alan was small-to-medium, but he carried himself tall. He was tanned, with dark, tightly curled hair, neatly trimmed. He had rugged good looks and eyes somewhere between seen-it-all and twinkly. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s a family that’s important to the town, to the region, even.’
‘I guess,’ I said. Important when you want to buy drugs, certainly, I thought about saying. I didn’t, obviously.
‘You haven’t any reservations, have you?’ he asked me.
‘Reservations?’
‘Well, we all know the reputation Donald and the family have,’ Alan said in his best we’re-all-men-of-the-world tones. ‘The … complicated relationship they have with the more … obvious forces of law and order.’
What? I cleared my throat to give myself time to double-check with my short-term memory what I thought I’d just heard. ‘You’re saying they’re part of the forces of law and order?’
‘Not officially, obviously,’ Alan said, smiling. He sighed. ‘Though, playing devil’s advocate, you might claim they help to keep the peace, so qualify in a sort of honorary capacity.’ He gestured with one hand. ‘Not the sort of analysis Sun readers would understand, but it has a certain internal logic to it, don’t you think?’
‘I suppose,’ I said. I might have looked slightly shocked, or just wary.
Alan sat forward, drawing me in towards him as we cradled our whisky glasses. ‘Does it … worry you, knowing the full range of the Murston clan’s business interests?’ he asked, still with a smile. He glanced over towards Mike Mac, who was deep in conversation with the Chief Constable. ‘Not to mention Mike, over there?’
‘Only a little,’ I said.
It was true I’d thought about what would happen if things changed and the Murstons were busted as a family. What would Ellie and I do if Donald and the boys were thrown into prison? How would Ellie be affected? She wouldn’t be implicated, would she? Could I be, just by association? If they bought us a flat, could we lose it? Frankly it didn’t worry me that much because I couldn’t see it happening. But you’d be stupid not to think about it.
Alan nodded, looked serious. ‘Well, I’m glad you say only a little. That’s … that’s very realistic, that’s very mature.’ He laughed. ‘Listen to me; that sounded patronising, didn’t it? Beg your pardon, Stewart. Guess I’m just relieved. Thing is, we live in a less than ideal world, do we not? In an ideal world maybe we’d have a more evidence-led, harm-reduction-based set of drug laws, but the brutal truth is that we don’t live in an ideal world; nothing like it. We have to do the best with what we’re faced with. As long as it remains political suicide to talk about legalisation, we’re all faced with trying to cope the best we can with our current laws, irrational though they may be, and also with the fact that people just like getting wasted, stoned, out of their heads one way or another, legal or not and whether we like it or not.’ He tapped his whisky glass with one manicured fingernail, grinning briefly before going back to serious mode. ‘One way or another we have to manage the problem. We need, in effect, to emplace our own harm-reduction programme in the absence of one agreed on internationally or even nationally. And that, frankly, is where Donald and Mike come in. Along with the local police, of course – we are all in this together. Forgive the cliché.’
‘You’re a politician,’ I said. ‘Isn’t it up to you guys to start changing things?’
Alan laughed indulgently. ‘Oh, I’m just a humble MEP. My hands are tied. In case you hadn’t noticed, my constituents choose me; I don’t choose them.’ He paused, smiled, as though waiting for the applause to die down. ‘I’d have to wait for a sea-change back here in dear old Blighty before I could join any consensus in Brussels. Sticking your head above the parapet on drugs just gets it blown off, then you’re no good to anyone.’
‘So we’re waiting for Rupert Murdoch’s heirs to take over, or Lord Rothermere’s, before it’s safe? Assuming they have a more rational set of views.’
Alan laughed quietly. ‘Well, if it was even that simple … The thing is, rationality is like probity, incorruptibility: awfully desirable in theory, but you’ll waste your life if you wait for it to become … the default, as it were. The kind of papers and attitudes we’re talking about might seem full of transparent nonsense to you and me, but they work; they sell, they’re popular, and when it comes to how people vote …’ He drew in a deep, dearie-me-type breath through his teeth. ‘Well, either the masses are as conservative and right-wing as they vote, if you see what I mean, or they’re terribly easily fooled and deserve what they get for being that gullible, frankly. Neither speaks very well of them, or us as a species, you could argue, but there we are, that’s what we’re faced with.’ He sipped from his drink. ‘Bankers’ bonuses all round, eh?’ He nodded as his gaze wandered round the others in the room. ‘I think you’ll find that same attitude, with a leaning towards the not-conservative-just-fools choice, is shared by pretty much everybody in this room. Doesn’t make us bad people, Stewart, just makes us smart and the rest not. But, yes, you obviously appreciate the problem.’
I leaned in a bit closer. So
did he. ‘Yeah,’ I said quietly, ‘but it’s still all a load of shite, though, isn’t it?’
He smiled. ‘I’m afraid it is, Stewart,’ he said, and sighed. ‘I’m afraid it is.’ He inspected his glass. ‘We all start out as idealists. I certainly did. I hope I still am, deep down. But idealism meets the real world sooner or later, and then you just have to …’
‘Compromise.’
‘I hope you’re not one of those people who thinks that’s a dirty word,’ Alan said, with a forgiving, understanding expression. (I just smiled.) ‘Marriage is about compromising,’ he told me. ‘Families are about compromising, being anything other than a hermit is about compromising. Parliamentary democracy certainly is.’ He snorted. ‘Nothing but.’ He drained his glass. ‘You either learn to compromise or you resign yourself to shouting from the sidelines for the rest of your life.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘Or you arrange to become a dictator. There’s always that, I suppose.’ He shrugged. ‘Not a great set of choices, really, but that’s the price we pay for living together. And it’s that or solitude. Then you really do become a wanker. Another drink?’
12
A red Toyota estate swings into the bus stop, splashing to a halt right at the entrance. The person inside leans over, reaching to push open the passenger side door.
My idiot heart leaps as I think, Maybe it’s her! But it isn’t. It’s not Grier, either. It’s a guy I recognise from High School, I think.
‘Stewart, thought that was you! Want a lift?’
‘Yeah. Yeah, ah … Cheers.’
I get in and sit down, carefully. Not carefully enough, though; a spear of pain jerks from my groin to my brain, making my eyes water. However, the jolt seems to dislodge the memory of who the guy is. He’s Craig Jarvey, from the year below ours.
‘Thought that was you,’ he says again as we rejoin the northbound traffic. He’s plump, fresh-faced, with unruly blond hair. He’s suited and tied and there are what look like carpet sample books all over the back seat.
‘Thanks, Craig.’
‘Aye, I always looks to see if there’s somebody I know at that bus stop. Specially if it’s raining.’
‘You’re a gent.’
‘You okay?’
‘I’ve had better days.’ I grin a rather mirthless grin at his openly interested and concerned face. We’re on the bridge now and I can feel the bump of every expansion joint passing under the car’s wheels and up through the seat to my still excessively tender balls. ‘It’s complicated,’ I tell him. ‘You don’t want to know, trust me.’
‘Ah,’ he says, nodding.
We crest the bridge’s shallow summit. The red and white striped tent that was on the other carriageway is gone; the twin lanes of traffic thunder on by.
Lauren McLaughley and Drew Linton were getting married.
Lauren was one of Ellie’s best friends, another Academy girl. She got engaged to Drew about the same time Ellie got engaged to me and they’d both wanted a wedding the following summer. At one stage the two girls had talked about having a joint wedding, but both mothers had smiled the sort of polite but steely smile that made it abundantly clear that that proposal really wasn’t going to do, now, was it? So Lauren and Drew were getting married the week before Ellie and me, and having a two-part honeymoon – a castle hotel in the western Highlands and a designer boutique place in Santorini – so that they could attend our wedding too.
They got married in the Abbey. Lauren’s mum looked very proud, though Ellie’s mum looked the more triumphant, rather as if the whole thing – splendid though it no doubt was, in its own small way – was just a dress-rehearsal for her own daughter’s rather more impressive event in a week’s time.
The reception was in the Mearnside Hotel, Stonemouth’s grandest venue for nearly a century, a mini Gleneagles built on the whinny hill overlooking the fairways of Olness with views beyond its sheltering screen of trees to the dunes and the sea.
Now that I’ve been to a few English weddings where they seem to expect the bride and groom to leave the party before the fun really starts, I’m better able to appreciate how good a traditional, thorough-going Scottish wedding really is, for all concerned – though especially, of course, for the guests. At the time I just thought all weddings were like this.
I walked into the ballroom where the reception was being held: maybe twenty tables of ten places each in one half of the room, leaving the other half free for dancing. I didn’t doubt that if Ellie and I had been going to have two hundred guests, we’d now be looking at two-ten, minimum.
The ceilidh band was just setting up: moody-looking guys about my age in black kilts, dreads and chunky boots. They were called Caul of the Wild and were probably sore they hadn’t thought of Red Hot Chilli Pipers first. Later on there would be a disco but before that there’d be the sort of yee-hooch, swing-your-granny-by-the-toe stuff that’s required to accompany the kind of dancing they teach you at school in these parts, with bracing titles like Eightsome Reel, Dashing White Sergeant and Strip the Willow.
Full-on Scottish country dancing like this is a sight and a sound to behold, and not for the faint-hearted. Aside from a few gentle dances like the St Bernard’s Waltz – basically for the grans and grandads, so they can shuffle round the floor recalling past and limber glories while everybody else is at the bar – it’s all fairly demented stuff, with rugby-scrum-sized packs of drunken people whirling round the room in progressively more fragmented rabbles trying to remember what the hell happens next.
The Gay Gordons is effectively choreographed chaos and an Eightsome Reel is a deranged marathon requiring a PhD in dance. Two hundred and fifty-six bars of dashing, reversing, turning, skipping, pas-de-basing, jump-stepping, successively-partner-swapping-until-you-get-back-to-the-one-you-started-with music is common, but the Eightsome properly lasts for four hundred and sixty-four bars, and no matter how fit you are at the start it’s always awfully good to get to the end.
I felt a sharp tap-tap on the back of my head, just above my neck. This would be Grier: her traditional greeting for almost as long as I’d known her. I turned and there she was: seventeen and a Goth, head to foot in black.
‘You have to dance with me,’ she told me, sounding very serious and looking at me from under her jet-black fringe. She had glossy black fingernails, white make-up, kohl-black eyes. ‘You’d better not say no; I’m thinking of becoming a witch.’
‘No problem, Gree,’ I told her. I surveyed her black-crêpe, long-sleeved, polo-necked dress, black tights and black suede shoes. The heels were breathtakingly high. Thought she looked taller. ‘Like the gear,’ I told her. ‘Very ninja.’
‘I don’t want to be called Gree any more.’
‘Back to Grier?’
‘Yes. On pain of death!’ She waggled her black fingernails at me.
‘Fair enough.’ I looked round. ‘Where are you sitting?’
‘We have a table at the back of beyond, in the far wilderness, by the doors to the kitchen,’ Grier said, pointing.
‘Right. So.’ I frowned. ‘A witch? Seriously?’
She waggled her fingers in front of my face again. ‘I have powers, you know,’ she announced. I suspected her eyes had narrowed: hard to tell with the fringe. ‘Powers you know nothing of !’
‘Jings.’
‘Don’t mock me, puny man,’ she growled.
‘Okay … impressive teenager,’ I growled back, leaning forward and doing some magic-trick-distraction hand waving of my own.
‘A dance,’ she told me, eyes flashing. ‘Don’t forget.’ She stalked off, teetering on her high heels.
She missed my probably inappropriately sardonic salute of acquiescence.
At the welcome drinks tables, covered in glasses of whisky, bubbles and Tropicana, I met Ferg, resplendent in full kilty outfit. I wore dark-blue suede shoes, a perfectly serviceable pair of black M&S trousers, a so-dark-blue-it’s-black velvet jacket picked up for a pittance from a charity shop on Byres Road (worn ironically, ob
viously) and a cheeky red shirt with a bootlace tie.
‘Gilmour,’ Ferg said, ‘you look like the croupier on an Albanian cruise liner.’
‘Hilarious! Epic! Yeah. And you finally found a tartan to compliment your vacuity: Clan Thermos. Well done. Evening, Ferg.’
‘Anyway, enough. Who or what was that?’ he asked, going up on tiptoes to look back at where I’d just been.
‘That? That was Grier. Grier Murston. Going to be my sister-in-law in a week.’
‘She’s quite … severe,’ he said, drinking from the first of the two whiskies he’d picked up. ‘I think I quite like her.’
‘She’s still a kid, Ferg. Grier’s a late developer. Always has been.’
‘What? She’s not even legal?’
‘She’s seventeen. She’s legal but she’s probably best left alone.’
We were strolling towards the tables now. I looked round to make sure none of Grier’s brothers was overhearing Ferg talk like this about their kid sister.
‘Ooh, am I being warned off ?’ Ferg asked.
‘Yes. Seriously, pick on somebody your own gender.’
‘Hmm. Probably. But I feel I need to keep my hand in. I say hand.’ He looked at me and shook his head. ‘Really. Did you get dressed in the dark again?’
‘Fuck off.’
‘Wait a minute; your parents are away, aren’t they? You got dressed by yourself ! It all starts to make sense now.’
‘It’s their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary? They’re on a cruise in the Med.’
‘And are those blue suede shoes?’
‘They are indeed.’
‘Christ! I trust you’re thinking of something a little more formal for your own be-shackling next week.’
‘Full Highland hoo-ha. I shall be dressed like a shortbread tin.’
‘Can’t wait.’
‘You started that speech yet?’ Ferg was, slightly against my own better judgement, my Best Man.
He looked thoughtful. ‘I thought I’d just extemporise, do it as a sort of stand-up gig?’