by Iain Banks
Anyway, it sounds like something to make long pisses much more interesting, but it is not for me, thanks to cruel fate.
‘Is he yur bruthur or sumhin?’
‘Naw, he’s ma friend.’
‘Zay olwiz get like iss?’
‘Ay, usually, on a Saturday night.’
This is a monstrous lie, of course. I am rarely so drunk that I can’t talk or walk straight. I’d have told Jamie as much, too, if I’d been able to talk and hadn’t been concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other. I wasn’t so sure I was going to throw up now, but that same irresponsible, destructive part of my brain – just a few neurons probably, but I suppose there are a few in every brain and it only takes a very small hooligan element to give the rest a bad name – kept thinking about those fried eggs and bacon on the cold plate, and each time I almost heaved. It took an act of will to think of cool winds on hilltops or the pattern of water-shadows over wave-carved sand – things which I have always thought epitomise clarity and freshness and helped to divert my brain from dwelling on the contents of my stomach.
However, I did need to have a piss even more desperately than before. Jamie and the girl were inches away from me, holding me by an arm each, being bumped into frequently, but my drunkenness had now got to such a state – as the last two quickly consumed pints and an accompanying whisky caught up with my racing bloodstream – that I might as well have been on another planet for all the hope I had of making them understand what I wanted. They walked on either side of me and talked to each other, jabbering utter nonsense as though it was all so important, and I, with more brains than the two of them put together and information of the most vital nature, couldn’t get a word out.
There had to be a way. I tried to shake my head clear and take some more deep breaths. I steadied my pace. I thought very carefully about words and how you made them. I checked my tongue and tested my throat. I had to pull myself together. I had to communicate. I looked round as we crossed a road; I saw the sign for Union Street where it was fixed to a low wall. I turned to Jamie and then the girl, cleared my throat and said quite clearly: ‘I didn’t know if you two ever shared – or, indeed, still do share, for that matter, for all that I know, at least mutually between yourselves but at any rate not including me – the misconception I once perchanced to place upon the words contained upon yonder sign, but it is a fact that I thought the “union” referred to in said nomenclature delineated an association of working people, and it did seem to me at the time to be quite a socialist thing for the town fathers to call a street; it struck me that all was not yet lost as regards the prospects for a possible peace or at the very least a cease-fire in the class war if such acknowledgements of the worth of trade unions could find their way on to such a venerable and important thoroughfare’s sign, but I must admit I was disabused of this sadly over-optimistic notion when my father – God rest his sense of humour – informed me that it was the then recently confirmed union of the English and Scottish parliaments the local worthies – in common with hundreds of other town councils throughout what had until that point been an independent realm – were celebrating with such solemnity and permanence, doubtless with a view to the opportunities for profit which this early form of takeover bid offered.’
The girl looked at Jamie. ‘Dud he say sumhin er?’
‘I thought he was just clearing his throat,’ said Jamie.
‘Ah thought he said sumhin aboot bananas.’
‘Bananas?’ Jamie said incredulously, looking at the girl.
‘Naw,’ she said, looking at me and shaking her head. ‘Right enough.’
So much for communication, I thought. Obviously both so drunk they didn’t even understand correctly spoken English. I sighed heavily as I looked first at one and then at the other while we made our slow way down the main street, past Woolworth and the traffic lights. I looked ahead and tried to think what on earth I was going to do. They helped me over the next road, me nearly tripping as I crossed the far kerb. Suddenly I was very aware of the vulnerability of my nose and front teeth, should they happen to come into contact with the granite of Porteniel’s pavements at any velocity above quite a small fraction of a metre per second.
‘Aye, me and one of my mates have been going round the Forestry Commission tracks up in the hills, goin’ round at fifty, skiddin’ all over the place like a speedway.’
‘Za’afac’?’
My God, they were still talking about bikes.
‘Where-ur we takin’ hum own-yway?’
‘Ma mum’s. If she’s still up, she’ll make us some tea.’
‘Yer maw’s?’
‘Aye.’
‘Aw.’
It came to me in a flash. It was so obvious I couldn’t imagine why I hadn’t seen it before. I knew there was no time to lose and no point in hesitating – I was going to explode soon – so I put my head down and broke free from Jamie and the girl, running off down the street. I’d escape; do an Eric so I could find somewhere nice and quiet for a piss.
‘Frank!’
‘Aw, fur fuck’s sek, gie’s a brek, whit’s ay up tae noo?’
The pavement was still below my feet, which were moving more or less as they were supposed to. I could hear Jamie and the girl running after me shouting, but I was already past the old chip shop and the war memorial and picking up speed. My distended bladder wasn’t helping matters, but it wasn’t holding me back as much as I’d feared, either.
‘Frank! Come back! Frank, stop! What’s wrong? Frank, ya crazy bastard, you’ll break your neck!’
‘Aw, le’m gaw, zafiez hied.’
‘No! He’s my friend! Frank!’
I turned the corner into Bank Street, pounded down it just missing two lamp-posts, took a sharp left into Adam Smith Street and came to McGarvie’s garage. I skidded into the forecourt and ran behind a pump, gasping and belching and feeling my head pound. I dropped my cords and squatted down, leaning back against the five-star pump and breathing heavily as the pool of steaming piss collected on the bark-rough concrete of the fuel apron.
Footsteps clattered and a shadow came from the right of me. I looked round to see Jamie.
‘Haw – ha – ha –’ he gasped, putting one hand on another pump to steady himself as he bent over a little and looked at his feet, the other hand on a knee, his chest heaving. ‘Here – ha – here – ha – here you – ha – are. Fffwwaaw. . . .’ He sat down on the plinth supporting the pumps and stared at the dark glass of the office for a while. I sat, too, slumped against the pump, letting the last drops fall free. I stumbled back and sat down heavily on the plinth, then staggered upright and pulled my cords back up.
‘What did you do that for?’ Jamie said, still panting.
I waved at him, struggling to do my belt up. I was starting to feel sick again, getting magnified wafts of pub smoke off my clothes.
‘Saw—’ I started to say ‘Sorry’, then the word turned into a heave. That anti-social part of my brain suddenly thought about the greasy eggs and bacon again and my stomach geysered. I doubled up, retching and heaving, feeling my guts contract like a balling fist inside me; involuntary, alive, like a woman must feel with a kicking child. My throat was rasped with the force of the jet. Jamie caught me as I almost fell over. I stood there like a half-opened penknife, splattering the forecourt noisily. Jamie shoved one hand down the back of my cords to keep me from falling on my face, and put the other hand on to my forehead, murmuring something. I went on being sick, my stomach starting to hurt badly now; my eyes were full of tears, my nose was running and my whole head felt like a ripe tomato, ready to burst. I fought for breath between heaves, snatching down flecks of vomit and coughing and spewing at the same time. I listened to myself make a horrible noise like Eric going crazy over the phone, and hoped that nobody was passing and could see me in such an undignified and weak position. I stopped, felt better, then started again and felt ten times worse. I moved to one side with Jamie helping me and went down on my
hands and knees on a comparatively clean part of the concrete where the oil stains looked old. I coughed and spluttered and gagged a few times, then fell back into Jamie’s arms, bringing my legs up to my chin to ease the ache in my stomach muscles.
‘Better now?’ Jamie said. I nodded. I tipped forward so that I rested on both buttocks and heels, my head between my knees. Jamie patted me. ‘Just a minute, Frankie lad.’ I felt him go off for a few seconds. He came back with some coarse paper towels from the forecourt dispenser and wiped my mouth with one bit and the rest of my face with another bit. He even took them and put them in the litter-bin.
Though I still felt drunk, my stomach ached and my throat felt like a couple of hedgehogs had had a fight in it, I did feel a lot better. ‘Thanks,’ I managed, and started trying to stand. Jamie helped me to my feet.
‘By God, what a state to get yourself in, Frank.’
‘Aye,’ I said, wiping my eyes with my sleeve and looking round to see that we were still alone. I clapped Jamie on the shoulder a couple of times and we made for the street.
We walked up the deserted street with me breathing deeply and Jamie holding me by one elbow. The girl had gone, obviously enough, but I wasn’t sorry.
‘Why’d you run off like that?’
I shook my head. ‘Needed to go.’
‘What?’ Jamie laughed. ‘Why didn’t you just say?’
‘Couldn’t.’
‘Just ’cause there was a girl there?’
‘No,’ I said, and coughed. ‘Couldn’t speak. Too drunk.’
‘What?’ laughed Jamie.
I nodded. ‘Yeah,’ I said. He laughed again and shook his head. We kept on walking.
Jamie’s mother was still up and she made us some tea. She’s a big woman who’s always in a green housecoat when I see her in the evenings after the pub when, as often happens, her son and I end up at her house. She’s not too unpleasant, even if she does pretend to like me more than I know she really does.
‘Och, laddie, you’re not looking your best. Here, sit down and I’ll get some tea on the go. Ach, you wee lamb.’ I was planted in a chair in the living-room of the council house while Jamie hung up our jackets. I could hear him jumping in the hall.
‘Thank you,’ I croaked, throat dry.
‘There you are, pet. Now, do you want me to turn on the fire for you? Are you too cold?’
I shook my head, and she smiled and nodded and patted me on the shoulder and padded off to the kitchen. Jamie came in and sat on the couch next to my chair. He looked at me and grinned and shook his head.
‘What a state. What a state!’ He clapped his hands and rocked forward on the couch, his feet sticking out straight in front of him. I rolled my eyes and looked away. ‘Never mind, Frankie lad. A couple of cups of tea and you’ll be fine.’
‘Huh,’ I managed, and shivered.
• • •
I left about one o’clock in the morning, more sober, and awash with tea. My stomach and throat were almost back to normal, though my voice still sounded harsh. I bade Jamie and his mother goodnight and walked on through the outskirts of town to the track heading for the island, then down the track in blackness, sometimes using my small torch, towards the bridge and the house.
It was a quiet walk through the marsh and dune land and the patchy pasture. Apart from the few noises I made on the path, all I could hear was the very occasional and distant roar of heavy trucks on the road through town. The clouds covered most of the sky and there was little light from the moon, and none ahead of me at all.
I remembered once, in the middle of summer two years ago, when I was coming down the path in the late dusk after a day’s walking in the hills beyond the town, I saw in the gathering night strange lights, shifting in the air over and far beyond the island. They wavered and moved uncannily, glinting and shifting and burning in a heavy, solid way no thing should in the air. I stood and watched them for a while, training my binoculars on them and seeming, now and again in the shifting images of light, to discern structures around them. A chill passed through me then and my mind raced to reason out what I was seeing. I glanced quickly about in the gloom, and then back to those distant, utterly silent towers of flickering flame. They hung there in the sky like faces of fire looking down on the island, like something waiting.
Then it came to me, and I knew.
A mirage, a reflection of layers on air out to sea. I was watching the gas-flares of oil-rigs maybe hundreds of kilometres away, out in the North Sea. Looking again at those dim shapes around the flame, they did appear to be rigs, vaguely made out in their own gassy glare. I went on my way happy after that – indeed, happier than I had been before I had seen the strange apparitions – and it occurred to me that somebody both less logical and less imaginative would have jumped to the conclusion that what they had seen were UFOs.
• • •
I got to the island eventually. The house was dark. I stood looking at it in the darkness, just aware of its bulk in the feeble light of a broken moon, and I thought it looked even bigger than it really was, like a stone-giant’s head, a huge moonlit skull full of shapes and memories, staring out to sea and attached to a vast, powerful body buried in the rock and sand beneath, ready to shrug itself free and disinter itself on some unknowable command or cue.
The house stared out to sea, out to the night, and I went into it.
5: A Bunch of Flowers
I KILLED little Esmerelda because I felt I owed it to myself and to the world in general. I had, after all, accounted for two male children and thus done womankind something of a statistical favour. If I really had the courage of my convictions, I reasoned, I ought to redress the balance at least slightly. My cousin was simply the easiest and most obvious target.
Again, I bore her no personal ill-will. Children aren’t real people, in the sense that they are not small males and females but a separate species which will (probably) grow into one or the other in due time. Younger children in particular, before the insidious and evil influence of society and their parents have properly got to them, are sexlessly open and hence perfectly likeable. I did like Esmerelda (even if I thought her name was a bit soppy) and played with her a lot when she came to stay. She was the daughter of Harmsworth and Morag Stove, my half-uncle and half-aunt by my father’s first marriage; they were the couple who had looked after Eric between the ages of three and five. They would come over from Belfast to stay with us in the summers sometimes; my father used to get on well with Harmsworth, and because I looked after Esmerelda they could have a nice relaxing holiday here. I think Mrs Stove was a little worried about trusting her daughter to me that particular summer, as it was the one after I’d struck young Paul down in his prime, but at nine years of age I was an obviously happy and well-adjusted child, responsible and well-spoken and, when it was mentioned, demonstrably sad about my younger brother’s demise. I am convinced that only my genuinely clear conscience let me convince the adults around me that I was totally innocent. I even carried out a double-bluff of appearing slightly guilty for the wrong reasons, so that adults told me I shouldn’t blame myself because I hadn’t been able to warn Paul in time. I was brilliant.
I had decided I would try to murder Esmerelda before she and her parents even arrived for their holiday. Eric was away on a school cruise, so there would only be me and her. It would be risky, so soon after Paul’s death, but I had to do something to even up the balance. I could feel it in my guts, in my bones; I had to. It was like an itch, something I had no way of resisting, like when I walk along a pavement in Porteneil and I accidentally scuff one heel on a paving stone. I have to scuff the other foot as well, with as near as possible the same weight, to feel good again. The same if I brush one arm against a wall or a lamp-post; I must brush the other one as well, soon, or at the very least scratch it with the other hand. In a whole range of ways like that I try to keep balanced, though I have no idea why. It is simply something that must be done; and, in the same way, I had to get rid of
some woman, tip the scales back in the other direction.
I had taken to making kites that year. It was 1973, I suppose. I used many things to make them: cane and dowelling and metal coathangers and aluminium tent-poles, and paper and plastic sheeting and dustbin bags and sheets and string and nylon rope and twine and all sorts of little straps and buckles and bits of cord and elastic bands and strips of wire and pins and screws and nails and pieces cannibalised from model yachts and various toys. I made a hand winch with a double handle and a ratchet and room for half a kilometre of twine on the drum; I made different types of tails for the kites that needed them, and dozens of kites large and small, some stunters. I kept them in the shed and eventually had to put the bikes outside under a tarpaulin when the collection got too large.
That summer I took Esmerelda kiting quite a lot. I let her play with a small, single-string kite while I used a stunter. I would send it swooping over and under hers, or dive it down to the sands while I stood on a dune cliff, pulling the kite down to nick tall towers of sand I’d built, then pulling up again, the kite trailing a spray of sand through the air from the collapsing tower. Although it took a while and I crashed a couple of times, once I even knocked a dam down with a kite. I swooped it so that on each pass it caught the top of the dam wall with one corner, gradually producing a nick in the sand barrier which the water was able to flow through, quickly going on to overwhelm the whole dam and the sand-house village beneath.
Then one day I was standing there on a dune top, straining against the pull of the wind in the kite, gripping and hauling and sensing and adjusting and twisting, when one of those twists became like a strangle around Esmerelda’s neck, and the idea was there. Use the kites.
I thought about it calmly, still standing there as though nothing had passed through my mind but the continual computation guiding the kite, and I thought it seemed reasonable. As I thought about it, the notion took its own shape, blossoming, as it were, and escalating into what I finally conceived as my cousin’s nemesis. I grinned then, I recall, and brought the stunter down fast and acute across the weeds and the water, the sand and the surf, scudding it in across the wind to jerk and zoom just before it hit the girl herself where she sat on the dune top holding and spasmodically jerking the string she held in her hand, connected to the sky. She turned, smiled and shrieked then, squinting in the summer light. I laughed, too, controlling the thing in the skies above and the thing in the brain beneath, equally well.