by Iain Banks
We stopped at Mum and Dad’s so I could grab a bag. By this time my hands had started shaking and I could hardly hold onto anything I picked up. Two minutes after we left, according to what the neighbours were prepared to disclose to my mum and dad – if not the police – Donald, Callum and Fraser were hammering at the door. They broke in, took long enough to establish I wasn’t there and left again. About the same time, Murdo and Norrie had stopped their pick-up alongside El’s Mini in the middle of town, and very nearly found me.
A quarter of an hour after that I was lying, shivering – from delayed terror or sheer relief, I hadn’t yet sorted out my jangled feelings to tell – inside a big yellow oil pipe, one of three stacked on a long flatbed railway wagon, itself part of a train of twenty similar wagons all hauled by a distantly clattering diesel engine, picking up speed again as it headed on south through the waning warmth of the night.
They’d shown some of the photos the children had taken, on the big screen above the stage in the ballroom. Maybe about half the guests were still there and could be bothered to watch; there were a lot of shots of empty chairs, table legs, and – as predicted – corners, and Drew’s dad hadn’t really had time to weed out all the crap; he was just grabbing cameras at random and seeing what he could find.
A short sequence from one camera showed the inside of a toilet, taken from beneath the faded green cover hiding the plumbing under the sinks. They were photos showing one pair of dark-blue brogues and one pair of red high heels. From the colour balance and a certain lack of sharpness, you could tell no flash had been used, or maybe been available.
The last couple of shots were taken from outside a closed cubicle. The first showed, under the door, the man’s dark shoes on either side of the base of a pale toilet bowl, with his trousers fallen round them and a pair of white underpants stretched tightly across the bottom of his calves. A pair of red shoes were also visible – one on either side of the bowl, half obscured by the crumpled trousers, heels front to the camera – and, in the very last shot, a pair of red gloved hands could be seen, fisted, as though in triumph, and raised high enough into the air to appear above the cubicle itself.
13
Craig Jarvey drops me at my mum and dad’s, then the red Toyota splashes away through the puddles. The rain is slackening.
There’s no car in the driveway. Still, when I let myself in I try to walk normally, but the house is empty. My hand moves to where my phone should be, then drops. I head to my room, lie on my bed, but only for a few minutes. I get up and fetch my mum and dad’s cordless.
‘Hello?’
‘Jel, hi. It’s Stewart. You busy?’
‘… No. Getting ready to go out.’
‘Got a few minutes?’
‘To talk or meet up? Cos—’
‘Just to talk.’
‘Okay. What?’
‘Just … something you said, earlier. About not everything being your idea? I—’
‘Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that too and I, ah, I’m glad you phoned, actually, because I shouldn’t have said that? That sounded really, I mean, I wasn’t—’
I’d intended to ask her about that other odd remark, from the fateful night itself, about knowing how I felt about her, which has kind of only just resurfaced – certainly as flagged for any particular significance – maybe due to just thinking back properly to that night, finally, or because I’ve been puzzling over the thing she said earlier today about it not all being her idea or whatever, but she’s sounding really defensive now, like she’s trying to head off whatever it is I’m trying to find out about, and I just know there won’t be any point trying to take this further.
Making enquiries today, asking questions about stuff that just suddenly seemed intriguing, has already cost me my phone, a couple of extremely painful punches and a very scary trip to an open hatch in the middle of the bridge. I shouldn’t be too surprised with myself if I’m easily put off.
‘It’s okay, it’s okay,’ I tell Jel, gently talking over her. ‘It’s nothing. I just—’
‘Well, you know—’
‘It’s no problem. Really. Forget I asked.’
‘Where … where are you anyway? That’s a Stonemouth number, but—’
‘My folks’. I lost my phone.’
‘Oh my God; you didn’t bet it, did you?’
‘What? No. Lost it walking home.’ I haven’t even thought about a cover story until now. Idiot. ‘Think it fell out of my jacket pocket,’ I tell her. ‘There’s…there’s a hole,’ I lie.
I try Al and Morven, to see where they’ve got to. Of course; they’re visiting Granny Gilmour in the old folks’ home in Aberdeen. It’s become something of a Sunday ritual over the last few years. I wasn’t invited because her early-onset dementia’s got so bad it might upset me not to be recognised. She already thinks Mum is one of her sisters and there are some days when she struggles to recall who Dad is.
I revise my phone-losing story to maybe having absent-mindedly put it into what was actually the space between the lining and the jacket’s outer layer rather than the pocket I thought I was putting it into, to avoid having to tear a hole in my jacket (because, knowing Mum, she’ll try to repair the tear). I have no idea whether this sounds convincing or contrived.
I lie back on the bed. Actually, my balls don’t feel quite so bad now. I carefully unzip and pull down, to take a look. No visible damage. I pull up my tee; no bruises on my belly either. I guess if I’d been ready for it, tensed, there might have been. I do myself back up again.
Antsy. I’m aware that I’m turning the cordless phone over and over in my hands, like something falling away…Tad vulnerable too, being honest. Feeling the need to be around people. You didn’t bet it, did you? Now why’s that phrase lodging like a half-swallowed fishbone in my short-term memory and refusing to get shuffled off to long-term storage or outright oblivion, where it belongs? How did …?
Oh, fuck it. I call Ferg. He was snoozing, but agrees to meet in the Formantine Lounge, in the old Station Hotel.
We sit in the first-floor lounge looking out over Union Street. It’s Sunday quiet, though there are still a few shops open. I’ve been to one myself: Bash and Balbir’s dad’s old place, buying a new phone. I’ve got it out the box and I’m RTFM-ing and setting it up as Ferg and I talk. He’s sipping a pint of IPA, I have a coffee.
No iPhone outlet in the centre of town? I’m appalled. The new phone’s touch screen is rubbish in comparison. I have so been spoiled. It’ll be the Apple Store on Regent Street for me as soon as I get back to London. Not much point buying one here anyway; still need to wait to get it back home to sync the fucker. (I didn’t bother bringing my laptop this weekend because, of course…I had my iPhone! Fuck.)
‘Oh, Jel tracked me down,’ I tell Ferg.
I’d found that I wanted to talk about That Night and its repercussions, its aftermath. I haven’t said anything about my excursion to the bridge with the Murston boys; Ferg thinks I wandered home, lost my moby en route and just chillaxed, between Lee’s loft and when I called him.
Ferg gives me his best seen-and-heard-it-all-before-but-keep-talking-anyway look: head back, eyebrows up, eyelids down. ‘She did?’
‘She did.’
‘This is in London, I take it?’
‘This is in London,’ I confirm. ‘Couple of years ago.’
‘And?’
‘Jel was there for a weekend. Going to a concert, seeing some friends, doing some cultural stuff. I was going to be around – I mean, we’d talked on the phone and email about meeting up when she was down in London before, but I was always away, to the point she thought I was trying to avoid her, which I wasn’t—’
‘Honestly?’
‘Yeah, honestly. No, really honestly,’ I tell him. ‘Stripping out the fact it happened in a toilet and it led to the single greatest catastrophe of my adult life—’
‘What’s so terrible about toilets?’ Ferg says indignantly. ‘Nice clean toilets are
lovely.’ He looks almost dreamy and gazes round the near empty lounge – there’s only us, a young couple and one very old geezer, all widely dispersed, besides the barman sitting on a bar stool with a newspaper – and says, ‘I have some terribly fond memories.’
‘I bet you do, Ferg. Anyway, all that aside, it was actually great sex, and we only had the time to do it once – I mean – so of course I’d happily have seen her again and hopefully take up where we left off ? But anyway; I’d already said she could stay at my place, but I was seeing this jewellery designer at the time and I might have forgotten to mention this to Jel? Or we – me and this girl – hadn’t been going out when I’d first said Jel could stay, like, a year earlier or whatever, and there was just…some awkwardness when Jel came to stay, because this other girl was there too, staying the weekend? That’s all.’
‘Awkwardness, like the delightful Anjelica had expected she’d be sharing your bed,’ Ferg suggests, ‘not the other girl?’
‘Well, I thought so at the time, so maybe. On the other hand, Jel never said so outright and it did occur to me later that maybe I was getting the signals wrong and I was just sort of big-upping myself, assuming she wanted to, you know, resume relations after our – as it turned out, incredibly public – hump in the Mearnside’s fifth-floor ladies’ toilet, trap two? You know: that thing a lot of guys do, assuming every girl secretly wants to leap into bed with them?’
Ferg appears mystified. ‘Really?’ Then he looks thoughtful.
‘Actually, yes; for most guys that would be laughable.’ He sits back, regards me. ‘You included, on a bad day.’
‘Thanks.’ I take up the little spoon, stir the sludge in the bottom of my coffee cup. I look at it for a moment or two, then let it drop, clattering, deciding to say something that I’ve wanted to say since I first clapped eyes on Ferg again. ‘Look, why did you never get in touch, Ferg? After I left the Toun, I mean? I heard nothing from you; just nothing. I mean, much as I hate to admit it, I actually missed your scabrous version of bonhomie and your hypercritical awareness of everybody else’s faults, both real and – probably most amusingly – imagined.’
Ferg glares at me. ‘Never mind that. Why did you never contact me?’
‘And we’re back to You Keep Changing Your Fucking Phone Number. Mine stayed the same.’
‘You changed your email.’
‘I started getting hate mail. I thought it wise.’
‘I have a policy: when people fuck off, it’s up to them to contact me, not the other way round. Bit like your policy of not sharing details of sexual encounters. Annoying, isn’t it? That said, I’ve always sort of half believed it’s not actually moral scruple, more early-onset geezer-hood forgetfulness.’
‘Do you, like, just not really like having friends, Ferg, is that it?’
‘How … specifically insulting an answer do you want here? There’s sort of a spread of options.’
‘Will I like any of them?’
‘Frankly, no. Though you’ll definitely hate some more than others.’
‘Doubtless.’
‘But anyway. What about Grier?’
‘What about Grier?’
‘What about the time Grier came to stay with you?’
‘Now that was just weird.’
‘Define.’
‘Well, something slightly similar, again a couple of years ago, when Grier was going to be in London and finally so was I at the same time and—’
‘This before or after Jel?’
‘Actually…Thinking about it? Maybe a year before. Probably.’ My hand starts moving to the pocket where my iPhone would be, to check my diary, but, of course …
‘Forgot to ask,’ Ferg says. ‘Did Jel ever visit again?’
‘No. And stopped enquiring.’
‘Pride hurt?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Anyway: Grier.’
‘Grier showed up with this guy: Brad. Weird, skeletal, long, bad – long greasy hair, dressed in about six layers even though it was summer, easily my age if not more, bottle of Jack in his pocket, fucking pharmacy of drugs in his other trenchcoat pocket – I mean, stuff I hadn’t even heard of – and this guy’s like some sort of about-to-be-big musician, allegedly, with a band called The Frets—’
‘Actually not a bad name for a guitar band.’ Ferg looks thoughtful. ‘Wait a minute, I think I’ve seen them …’
‘Yeah, but they weren’t a guitar band, and besides a quick Google would have revealed there were already several bands called The Frets. Anyway, so: I assume Grier and Brad are an item even though he wasn’t mentioned when Grier booked, as it were, and I show them the spare bedroom, only this is all wrong, because apparently they’re not together af ter all. More friends, I’m given to understand?’
Ferg’s eyes narrow. ‘So you do have a spare room?’
‘I did at the time. Didn’t I mention my plan to turn it into a gym?’
‘No. But never mind. What about Jewellery Girl?’
‘Not present, and neither was anybody else. I was unattached at the time.’
‘Okay. So.’ Ferg sits forward, looking interested. ‘Sleeping arrangements?’
‘Well, so I offer her the spare room and Brad the couch but he’s unable to sleep on the couch because it isn’t comfortable or—’
‘Don’t skip. What about the evening? Where did you go?’
‘Bar, local sushi, bar. All very convivial. Anyway, Brad appears in my room, announcing the couch isn’t the right shape or hasn’t been Feng Shuied properly or something, and besides ever since his mum left and his dad died – or the other way round – he can’t sleep alone and can he climb in with me?’
‘Hmm. Fresh.’
‘So I tell him to get to fuck.’
‘I should hope so,’ Ferg sounds affronted. ‘Bugger gay solidarity; if you’re going to have the temerity to reject me, you’d fucking better reject anybody else.’
‘Obviously your feelings were my first consideration, Ferg.’
‘Finally! Go on.’
‘So I start trying to get back to sleep but next thing there’s what can only be described as a ruckus from the spare room.’
‘Currently occupied by Grier’s sweet ass.’
‘Currently occupied by Grier. So the guy has tried the same thing with her?’
‘See? You cynic; maybe he was telling the truth all the time and just wanted somebody to cuddle up against, platonically?’
‘Grier, by this time, is throwing things at Brad.’
‘Soft things? Hard things?’
‘My things! A pillow, an alarm clock, also a lamp.’
‘On a scale of one to ten, with one representing a featherweight piece of Ikea frip with an unpronounceable name and ten an original leaded Tiffany requiring two hands just to lift, where would this lamp fall?’
‘It fell in my hall. Broke; tore the socket out of the wall, too.’
‘Hmm. Sounds like an eight or a nine. Hey, you could all have slept together, you and Grier either side of him. Might have been sweet.’
‘Yeah. Anyway, so we’re about to kick Brad out but then he breaks down and starts sobbing and talking about how he’s so sorry and he’s always been rejected, all his life, and did he mention it’s his birthday? Whatever; in the end we let him stay, but half an hour later when I’ve just fallen asleep again there’s all this noise, and the fucker has invited all his pals and what looks like every fucking random in the area to come back to mine for a party! They’re in the living room rolling up my Persian rug – I mean, not to dance or anything, to fucking nick – they’ve already emptied the drinks fridge and wine rack, and they’re tearing my designer Porsche kettle apart to make it into some sort of home-made crack bong or something.’
‘You called the rozzers?’
‘Fuck that; they were all English so I went into full-on, growling, menacing, Scottish bampot mode, Glasgow with a touch of Toun, and told them if they didn’t GTF I’d kick their arseholes so far up them th
ey’d be able to rim themselves from the inside.’
‘High risk.’
‘Worked; cleared the place inside two minutes.’
‘And Grier?’
‘Shaken. Crying. She’d woken up to find a couple getting seriously jiggy practically on top of her. By the time she managed to wriggle out there had been, well, issue.’
‘Oh dear. Tissue issue?’
‘Yup. All over the duvet. And blood; we reckon the female half of the copulationary equation concerned had probably been having her delicate time of the lady month just then. Copiously.’
‘You see? What have I been telling you all these years? Girls are gross. Guys only leak if you pump them too hard.’
‘Thanks for that. So we cleared the place, tidied a little, double-locked the door—’
‘Brad was on the outside by this time?’
‘First one I personally kicked out.’
‘A little inhospitable, but there you are.’
‘And – weary as fuck, coming down off an incredible adrenalin high af ter facing down these twenty randoms, half guys, I tell Ellie—’
‘Ellie had turned up? Or was she one of—’
‘Grier. Grier, Grier, Grier; fuck off. I told Grier that she could have my bed and I’d take the couch, but she’s still, like, really upset and says, like, no more to it, honestly, nothing extra intended or expected or wanted … but can she sleep with me?’
‘So you did.’
‘So I did. I slept with her, but I didn’t fuck her. This is technically possible for people, Ferg, you’ll just have to take my word for it.’
‘I hear you,’ Ferg says. There’s a pause. ‘But did you really not fuck her?’
‘Really. Though there was some …’
‘Nocturnal digital wanderage? Oh-I-just-rolled-over-like-I-always-do embracingness, outright Come-on-let’s-just-fuck pleading-hoodicity?’
‘Kind of option D.’
‘Option D? All the above.’ Ferg nods knowingly. ‘Really? So you were all over her.’
‘No, it was like fucking role reversal, man. I was like some virtuous Victorian maiden fending off the squire’s unwelcome advances. At one point I got up and put on another pair of underpants. Like, on top of the first pair?’