by Iain Banks
‘Huh,’ Ellie says. ‘Thought you’d want the complete set of Murston girls.’
I just suck in breath through pursed lips and frown at her.
Ellie picks up her jacket from the back of the bar stool. ‘Oh well. Thought so.’ She nods at my jacket, draped over another seat back. ‘Get your coat, love; you’ve pushed.’
I just smile, pick the jacket up, and we tramp creakingly back down through the wood-panelled excesses of the castle that never was.
She drives me back through a starry night, the Mini’s headlights piercing the fragrant late-summer darkness of the parkland around the old building, pulling us through to the stuttering streams of red and white lights marking the main road back into town.
Ferg rings my new phone just before we get to Dabroch Drive, wondering if I fancy a pint later, but I say no: long day, bit tired.
‘Bit fucking old, lightweight,’ Ferg tells me.
‘Whatever.’
‘See you at the funeral.’
‘See you then.’
We pull up outside Mum and Dad’s. Ellie leans over quickly and kisses me on the cheek. ‘Tomorrow.’
‘Tomorrow.’
I watch the Mini’s lights disappear round the corner, and touch my cheek where she kissed me.
‘Still more than you deserve,’ I murmur to myself.
I take a look round, checking for lurking Murston brothers or their vehicles, and keek through the hedge to check there’s nobody lying in wait there, then safely negotiate the path to the door, a cup of tea, some pleasant, inconsequential talk with Al and Morven, and bed.
MONDAY
15
It’s another one of those diaphanous days, the Toun submerged in a glowing mist from dawn onwards. It’s supposed to lift later, according to the forecast, though the forecasting people are notoriously bad at getting the Toun’s weather right.
I’m up early, using the family computer in Dad’s office. It’s a Windows machine so it all feels a bit Fisher-Price after an Apple interface, but grit your teeth and it works, so I check gmail and do a bit of not very difficult detective work, looking for a photograph, then both send it to myself and print it out, A6, pocket size.
It’s one of those taken five years ago in the ladies’ toilet on the fifth floor of the Mearnside Hotel – the Mearnside Hotel and Spa, as the website politely insists we ought to call it now – the one that shows Anjelica’s red satin gloves raised, fists clenched, above the top of the middle cubicle door. I’ve never looked for this before, never seen it, or the others, showing legs and shoes and the base of a toilet bowl. I still don’t want to look at those, though I do, on the same anonymous Talc O Da Toun website, just to check. Jeez, I was still wearing Ys or jockeys back then; they’re very…stretched. Preposterously, just looking at this dimly lit, fuzzily focused, arguably rather sordid stuff brings back the memory of the night itself, and I start to get a hard-on.
Enough. I put the computer to sleep and pocket the print in the jacket of the black Paul Smith suit hanging on the back of my bedroom door, then go down to breakfast.
Muesli, fruit, wholemeal toast and tea. ‘Dad?’ I ask.
‘Work,’ Mum tells me, downing her tea and standing. She’s still in jeans and tee, hair mussed. ‘He’ll join us at the crem – ah, the cemetery. I’ll have to dash off after – only got the morning. Right. Dashing for a shower.’
‘I’ll clear.’
‘Ta.’
‘D’you know,’ Dad says, as we stand in the crowd gathered round the graveside on Hulshiers Hill, ‘I’m nearly fifty and this is the first actual interment I’ve been to.’
I glance at Al, surprised. ‘Really?’ I think about this. ‘Suppose it’s cos old Joe was a farmer once; attached to the land, and all that.’
‘Maybe,’ Dad says. ‘Couple of guys in the work, near retirement age, and they were saying the same thing. Only ever been to the crem. Hardly ever see people buried these days.’
‘It’s a good crowd,’ Mum says, looking round.
She’s right; a couple of hundred at least, all clustered like a dark parliament of crows on the hillside, our mass punctuated by the mossy gravestones of those gone before. The Murston family are graveside, of course, with seats. We’re bottom of the B-list, maybe C-list in terms of proximity.
Must have been some delay back at the house or the funeral parlour because we were almost all here by the time the slow-moving cortège nosed its way between the cemetery gates at the bottom of the hill and came crunching up the pitted tarmac like a procession of giant black beetles.
I caught a glimpse of Mr and Mrs M – him looking grim, her with her mouth set tight – and watched the three brothers in case they were trying to lock eyes on me, but they just stood at the back of the hearse, sharing their dad’s grim expression, as the coffin was unloaded. Then Murdo, Fraser, Norrie and their dad shouldered the big, gleaming casket along with two of the undertakers. Mrs M stayed tight-lipped as she followed the minister and the coffin up the path to the grave.
Mostly I watched Ellie and Grier. They walked together, looking straight ahead, beautiful in black, Ellie wearing a long skirt, a white blouse, a thin silk coat and flat shoes, Grier in a three-piece suit with a little pillbox hat and a spotted veil. Shiny heels brought her up to the same height as Ellie.
Old Joe, I didn’t doubt, would have thought they were both lovely.
The family got to the graveside and sat down, and I lost sight of the girls. I looked around, then spotted Ferg, further up the hill, passing a silvery hip flask to a tearful-looking, raven-haired girl next to him.
Ten minutes later and we’ve been through the recited, edited, rosified highlights of Joe’s life – him being part of Stonemouth’s premier crime family seems to have been spun out of existence – and now the minister’s blethering on about dust to dust and ashes to ashes, and Joe having the sure and certain knowledge of a totally spiffing life to come at the right hand of God or some such bollocks. I listen to this stuff and just get embarrassed. I mean, embarrassed for us as a species.
Life after death. I mean, really?
At the few funerals I’ve been to – like Al, I’ve only ever been to crematoria till now – I’ve always sort of tightened up when they start spouting all this shit and felt like I’m so close to just jumping up and shouting, ‘Oh, fuck off !’ or something equally guaranteed to ruin everybody’s day and make me even less popular. Honestly. I get the same thing at weddings when they start the same in-the-sight-of-God nonsense, though it’s not as strong, and the majority of weddings I’ve been to have been secular; they’re fine, they’re joyous. Only one secular funeral so far, and it was infinitely better than all this weak-minded, fantasy-and-superstition shite.
I remember feeling just as clear-eyed about all this when I was still almost a kid – thirteen or fourteen – and sort of half assumed that you just got more gullible and religious or whatever as you got older, but if it’s happening to me I see no signs so far; quite the opposite. I think I was plain wrong there and the new explanation is I just lack the credulity gene.
I still have a vague feeling that there might be more to existence than can be experienced with our surface senses, so technically I guess I’m an agnostic, but nothing’s more guaranteed to bring out my inner atheist than listening to the witterings of a holy man who thinks all the answers are already there in some book, whether it was written millennia ago or last week.
However, lesson over. The Murstons have stood up again and I can see Ellie once more. Could I really have gone through with our own wedding ceremony, the whole religious performance, in a church and everything? Now I’m kind of stunned I even contemplated it, but at the time I remember thinking that, precisely because the religious side of it was meaningless, it was okay to go along with it. And if there was any sacrifice of principles involved, I was making that sacrifice for Ellie, and to keep her family sweet; not because I was frightened of them or anything, but to convince them that I was a man of
substance and moral fibre, that I did indeed love their daughter, I took my responsibilities seriously and I could be relied upon to do the right thing.
Obviously my minutes-long dalliance in a loo with the lovely Jel slightly worked against the wholesome image I was trying to project.
Jel’s here too, with Josh and Mike and Sue. Mrs Mac actually seems to be crying. Anjelica appears plain and severe, in a very dark grey suit with a knee-length skirt. She catches me looking at her and gives me the smallest of smiles. I nod back and we glance away again, pretending to listen to what the witch doctor’s gibbering on about now.
I think I catch the sparse, hollow sound of the first handfuls of earth hitting the coffin lid. It’s the most genuinely affecting part of the whole ceremony. Perhaps the only one, apart from just the sight of two generations of Murston hard men shouldering the burden of a third.
The family troop back down to the ancient Daimlers and stretch Fords and Volvos, and the rest of us disperse amongst the gravestones to find our own highly scattered cars and minibuses, while the sky above us teases out its cloudy wisps from gold to streaked and filmy blue, as a light breeze picks up off the sea.
16
We’re back to the Mearnside Hotel (and Spa) for the post-funeral-ceremony cold collation, as it is so charmingly entitled. The old place rises resplendently above its green-smooth lawns, clipped topiary and sculpted, surgeoned trees, its towers and turrets looking like they’re trying to snag the last departing traces of the low cloud, reluctant to let it go. A hazy roll of mist, full banked along the coast, reveals beneath its hem the glowing white waves breaking on the sands in the middle distance, but obscures the sea itself.
Dad and I get here last because we had to drop Mum at her school: hardly en route, but better than trying to take more than one car to the vehicle-unfriendly cemetery. Similar problem here. We have to park on the driveway down to the car park.
‘Aye, bloody good turnout,’ Dad says, loosening his tie as we walk down to the main doors and the usual huddle of smokers. ‘Doubt mine’ll be as packed.’
‘Al, please,’ I say to him.
‘Think I’ll get buried at sea,’ he says gruffly, though he’s grinning.
‘Fine. I’ll expect a discount on the hire of the dredger.’ Dad chuckles wheezily.
The funereal equivalent of the reception-line thing they do at weddings had been set up at the doors into the rather grand, east-facing, firstfloor reception room where the after-funeral drinks and munchies are being dispensed; however, by the time Dad and I arrive the line of mourning Murstons has dispersed, which comes as a mighty relief, though it does mean we’ll need to seek out the family and do something similar impromptu later. For the moment they’re up at the buffet tables, progressing with plates, so probably best to wait a bit.
Anyway, Dad has nipped to the loo. He does this rather often these days, apparently, though he claims to see no need to invoke medical opinion on this new development; Mum’s a lot more worried than he seems to be and has told him she’s going to start timing the intervals between toilet visits if he doesn’t go to the doc’s soon.
I make my way through the reception room; the place is set out with large round tables, laid for a light lunch and busy with people sitting chatting, already stuffing their gobs or still standing socialising. About a dozen staff are bringing tea and coffee and taking orders for drinks, plus the bar near the main doors is open. The Murstons have a reserved table of their own in the centre but everybody else just has to find their own place. The room’s pretty big: a first-floor image of the Mearnside’s main dining room, one storey below.
Ferg inspects me when we meet up in the giant bay window that forms most of the reception room’s eastern edge.
‘If it was beauty sleep you were after last night, I’d ask for your money back.’
‘Good to see you too, Ferg.’ I’m holding a whisky from the welcome table by the doors. Ferg, naturally, has two. ‘Who was that girl you were plying with drinks in the graveyard?’
‘Plying,’ Ferg says thoughtfully. ‘Plying. There’s a word one hears all too seldom these days, don’t you think?’
‘Avoiding the question. There’s a phrase one hears all too freq—’
‘Name’s Charlene. Used to cut what was left of the late Mr Murston Senior’s hair in the local tonsorial emporium. Emotional child. Probably cries after a good fuck. I hope to find out.’
I look round. ‘She still here?’
‘Back to work, but we sort of have a date afterwards, so I’m pacing myself, or will be once the grand behind the bar and the free bottles on the tables run out. Cheers.’
We clink glasses. ‘To Joe,’ I say.
‘Hmm?’
I sigh. ‘The deceased?’
‘Well, absolutely,’ Ferg says. We re-clink. ‘To the late Mr M.’ We knock back a whisky each like it’s cheap vodka. Splendid idea at this time of day on an empty stomach. We stash the empty glasses on the window ledge.
‘So…How was your quiet, or early, night, last night?’ Ferg asks. One of his eyebrows has bowed to an arch; this is almost enough to distract you from what is basically a leer filling the rest of his face.
‘Okay, what?’ I ask.
‘Oh, nothing. A friend said they saw you in El’s car yesterday evening, latish.’
I shake my head. ‘Fuck me,’ I breathe, ‘you get away with nothing in this town.’
‘Yeaah,’ Ferg drawls. ‘Tell that to the lady’s family.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Indeed I do. One reason I left. So?’
‘Experienced a visit from El’s brothers after I left Lee’s place yesterday.’
Ferg nods knowingly. ‘Thought you seemed a bit rattled yesterday, in the Formartine. They rough you up?’
‘A little.’
‘Fuck. I’m amazed you only look as rubbish as you do.’
‘Ta. Ellie heard and came calling just to mess with them.’
‘Retaliation. That the only way you can get a date these days?’
‘Wasn’t a date. We had a very pleasant drive, we talked a lot, she put together some dinner at hers and then drove me home. I was in her car and she was about to drop me off when you rang.’
‘What did you talk about? Anything salacious?’
‘Some interesting stuff; can’t divulge.’
‘Of course not,’ Ferg says, rolling his eyes. ‘You are a sort of bilge of last resort for interesting information, aren’t you, Stewart? You’re like one of these people who offer to accept the kind of chain-letter emails and texts that cretins think it’ll be unlucky to break: gossip gets to you and dies.’
‘One does one’s best,’ I murmur modestly in my best Prince Charles, tugging at a shirt cuff.
‘So you didn’t fuck?’
‘I can neither confirm nor deny—’
‘Oh, for—’
‘But no.’
‘Bodie!’ Dad says, arriving holding a whisky; he transfers it from one hand to the other to shake Ferg’s hand. ‘How’s it hingin?’
‘Little left of true, as usual, Stewart’s dad,’ Ferg says. Dad looks at him, puzzled. ‘Please call me Ferg, Al,’ Ferg asks.
Dad laughs. ‘What you two hatching? Looked deep in conversation there.’
‘Ferg is far too shallow to have a deep conversation with,’ I tell Dad.
‘Your son hits the nail on the cuticle as ever, Al,’ Ferg says with a sigh. ‘I’m only deep on the surface. Inside, I’m shallow to the core.’
‘Thank you, friend of Dorothy. Parker,’ I say, smiling.
Al sports a tolerant frown. ‘Okay,’ he says, tapping Ferg on one elbow. ‘I’m going to leave you two to it. Stewart; couple of minutes, then we’ll go over to pay our respects, aye?’
‘Sure thing, Paw.’
‘Okay; I’ll be over at Mike and Sue’s table. See you, Bodie,’ he calls as he turns away.
‘Cheers, Mr G,’ Ferg says, then swivels back to me. ‘So, how do t
hings stand between you and Ellie?’
‘They stand erect, Ferg. Actually, they don’t; they more…recline.’ He looks at me. ‘You were expecting a straight answer, Bodie?’
Ferg looks at me for a bit longer, then finishes his second whisky.
‘You know, we ought to eat something. I mean, we ought to drink something, too, but we should line our stomachs or we could suffer later.’
‘You may have a point.’
‘Shall we to the groaning buffet tables?’
‘Yes, I suppose we—’
‘Stewart,’ a deep, purposeful voice says. ‘Ferg.’
‘Pow, hello,’ Ferg says, shaking the impressive mitt of Powell Imrie as he arrives to loom over us. Another visitor. My, we’re popular, or at least conspicuous. Teach us to stand in the middle of the window recess.
Dressed in formal black, Powell looks even more like a high-class bouncer than usual. He even stands – once he’s shaken our hands – with his hands clasped just above his crotch. Powell has a way of looking at a person – a sort of polite but tight, You still here? smile – that works on all known types of human.
Ferg takes the hint, holds my upper arm briefly. ‘See you at the comestibles.’
Powell watches him go, turns back to me. ‘Heard Murd and Norrie came to see you yesterday.’
‘That’s right,’ I agree.
‘You okay?’
‘Fine.’
‘Wasn’t anything to do with me, just want you to know that.’
‘Didn’t think it was, Powell.’
He glances smoothly round towards the centre of the room and the Murston family table. ‘I’ve had a wee word. Shouldn’t happen again,’ he says. And, as he says it, I completely believe him. Then, after a short pause, he adds, ‘…Aye.’