by Iain Banks
And several times, in those balmy autumn days, I thought, This is the life.
Do you blame me?
By Gauche I was no longer trying to prove anything about what a wonderful song writer I was. My own name wasn't actually mentioned once on the writing credits on that album; instead I used a variety of rather silly aliases. The songs were variously credited to O'More, Sutton, Sundry, Thistle and Hlasgow; only I knew these were Justin O'More, Oliver Sutton, Alan Sundry, Patrick Thistle and Gerald Hlasgow (the Scotsman). Ah, good Lord preserve us from our own in-jokes.
One joke fell thoroughly flat in a privately embarrassing way; I'd called the company which published the songs 'Full Ashet Music'. People at ARC had looked puzzled, but didn't raise any objections. I'd thought my little pun was at least mildly amusing, but I hadn't realised that an ashet was now only a Scottish word for a serving platter, and not one recognised any more by English people, let alone Americans. As I was trying to fool myself that I was a nonchalant, debonair and sophisticated man of the world at the time — a real international citizen and discreetly famous person — I found this accidental parochialism a terrible loss of face, even if nobody else ever brought up the faux pas.
I hadn't realised how much of my speech marked me down as from north of the border; not just the obvious accent, but the words and phrases I used, too. I didn't know people in London didn't say 'neither it is' or 'back the way' or 'see what like it is' or 'see the likes of me?'; I didn't know English people didn't call shopping 'messages', or little fingers 'pinkies'; and I didn't realise that knowing all those other words would, to some people, make me seem ignorant.
I knew I wasn't. I knew I was a clever big bastard. I also knew I would never be quite as clever as I'd once thought I was, but I was content, and happy with myself in a way which at the time seemed not to come with a time-limit attached. I'd set out to do something and succeeded, if not beyond my wildest dreams — no seriously ambitious person ever does — then certainly not far away from them. Nothing was so tough. Nothing was impossible if you put your mind to it. The world could be tamed. I knew it all. And there was more to come; this was just the start. Just watch me now.
I recall vaguely considering whether to adopt a higher profile in the band; perhaps even do a Bowie, and change image and/or name for each different album, but Captain Captivity, Walter Ego and Eddie Currents never did get further than the planning stage. Just as well too.
We had gone back to Paisley together only once, on the Scottish leg of the UK tour, though the others had been back individually a few times. I went to see my ma; she was still living in the flat in Ferguslie. I'd tried to persuade her to move out and let me buy her a place, but she wouldn't let me. What she had done was fill the flat with gaudy junk. Whole walls were covered with Woolworth's repro paintings; dusky maidens with flowers in their hair, white horses galloping through moonlit surf, moonfaced waifs leaking crystal tears... all on a background of red flock wallpaper .
There was a lot more stuff like that, but I didn't hang around to do an inventory.
We threw a party at a local hotel for our old pals; I think we all worried about it being an embarrassing failure. Would they think we were being patronising? Would some of my mates, and maybe Mickey's, break the whole thing up? Would people just not turn up? Would they mix at all if they did attend?
We were right to worry. If we hadn't worried, we might have been too complacent and, just by our attitude, put people off.
Instead we worked hard at making it work; persuading people to come, making the arrangements, having a local band play music but having a couple of new songs worked out so that — if we were pressed — we could do some acoustic stuff by ourselves late on. Not to mention providing free beer and three minibuses to shuttle people back to their homes after it was over (there were jokes about an armoured car to make the run to Ferguslie, but as far as I know minibus and driver both survived).
It worked. The party was a great success. We said we'd do it again next year, we were so enthusiastic and enjoyed ourselves so much, but we didn't; we were on the European tour then and just didn't have the time. We always meant to make the time, sometime, but other things kept cropping up, and after a while after a surprising number of years had slipped by, almost without us noticing — we were slightly ashamed at ourselves for not having kept our promise, and there was, I think, an unspoken agreement that it would be easier all round not to repeat the party, and to pretend we hadn't broken our word.
Jean Webb came to the party, with a boyfriend.
I hadn't seen Jean for nearly a year, and hadn't thought of her for months, I suppose, and I was partly surprised and partly annoyed with myself for feeling jealous when she turned up at the party with a tall young gas fitter called Gerald, who wore glasses. The truth was, I'd either forgotten how bonny she was, and how nice, or she'd become a lot more of both during the time I'd been away.
I wondered what she might have said, and what might have happened, if I had asked her to come away to the big bad city with me, a year before. It was a fleeting feeling though, and I slipped easily into the role of local-boy-made-good-but-not-bragging-about-it when I talked to Jean and Gerald.
She was working as a secretary with the gas board. She had all our records. Her mother was still bad with the arthritis. Her father was out of work, but the brother at Inverkip was still bringing in some money; her other brother was going to business school to study accountancy. No, she wouldn't be going to art school. They were a good crowd at the gas office.
Gerald wasn't one of our fans — he was more of a Soul man — but he thought it was good to see local people doing so well, and liked Dave's guitar playing.
At one point, when he'd gone for the drinks, Jean, her hair a red-brown halo of curls, and her fuller, less girlish face peeking out from that tangled mane, smiled at me and said, 'You're lookin well. Are ye happy, Daniel?'
I think I must have shown my surprise. Before I could reply, she laughed and squeezed my hand, briefly. 'Daft question, eh?'
I shrugged, unsure what to say. 'It's... everything's hhhhappened hell of a fast, but... yeah, I'm pretty happy, I suppose. Ask me again in a year or t-two, when I've caught up with myself.'
Jean nodded, smiling, looking from one of my eyes to the other. ' Aye, we've missed you, Daniel. Old place isn't the same without ye.'
Stumped again, but for longer this time, all I could manage was a great show of humble embarrassment, and, 'Aw, gee, shucks ...' said in a silly voice, before Gerald came back with the drinks.
Intervals. Brief frozen disconnected moments, time passed on other worlds.
From the fairy tale setting of that great, ancient house in the soft, undulating English countryside, my whole life took on a curiously foreshortened and rosy look, and even Ferguslie Park assumed a hazy aura of nostalgia. Going back there blew a hole in that particular fog bank, but it closed up again pathetically quickly; a month after visiting my ma and her collection of mass-produced crap, I was thinking about how cosy the place had been, and what a fine crucible for forming my precocious but not yet fully-plumbed talent.
Well, I was still young.
How do you work out when you were most happy? Dunno myself but, however you measure it, I was happy then. It was a more relaxed, fulfilled happiness than that I'd felt just after the contract was signed, or after I'd heard my song on the radio for the first time, and, of course, part of it — I still don't know how much — was due to Inez.
My first real lover; my first proper (improper) relationship.
Inez with her dancer's body and her wild tempers and her rough-house, rowdy, roguish sexuality; holy shit, the trapeze artiste could not have been more athletic. What did I excite in her? She must have seen something, and she can't have cared for the money (I said 'Mmm-marry me' and she said 'Nnn-nope'), so what was it kept her with me, fairly faithful and unfairly jealous, for those years? I never did work it out. I asked her, direct, often enough what she saw in me, but all s
he ever did was frown deeply and tell me it was absolutely none of my business.
The breathtaking nerve of that floored me, every time. Fair enough, I thought, unbloody but bowed. A couple of times she insulted me in front of people, and once Davey said afterwards I was stupid to let her talk to me like that. I can't remember what it was she said; I can't remember what it was I said in reply to Davey. But I didn't do anything.
Inez and I slept curled up together, her front against my back, and often I would wake during the night, feeling her breath against me in the darkness, warm and fragrant, and find that she had, very lightly, I think always unconsciously, cupped her hand around my balls, so that my scrotum lay in her fingers and palm, like a nest within the bowl of a tree. She never hurt me, and I don't think she ever woke up like that — she'd always have changed position later on in the night — but I must have woken up to find myself held gently like that dozens and dozens of times.
It seemed to me then a sweet and endearing gesture.
But it was a magical time anyway, in that old house.
Once when I'd gone back indoors to fetch a cardigan for Inez, and have a pee (oh, ye gods, during a game of croquet, would you believe?), I stood in the second-floor bathroom washing my hands and looking out through an open window.
Before me were the grounds; a strip of parkland backed by a low hill strung with tall young trees; birch and maple and elm. To one side I could see an edge of the circus tent, pitched on the deeply shadowed park, its pennants fluttering in the wind. It was late in the afternoon; the circus' band was playing on the far side of the house, on the terrace. Music drifted on the breeze like smoke.
The wooded hill opposite me was bright in the autumn sunshine, and people were walking on paths within the wood, their clothes picked out by the gloaming light. As I watched, another strong gust of wind came and shook the trees, and leaves dropped from their branches like rain from a sunlit cloud; glorious and glittering in the warm air. My mouth dropped open, and I watched, quite overcome, as the fluttering shower of golden leaves burst down upon the walking people, like confetti for the wedding of some unseen woodland spirits.
SEVEN
'There's a funny smell in here, so there is, Jim.'
Well, yes. Pigeon crap and dogshit, dog vomit, dog pee, and curry. Apart from that...
I spent a deeply unfulfilling couple of hours yesterday evening, sniffing and searching and mopping and scraping and washing and cleaning. The pigeon is still at large; I can hear the little bastard cooing sadly every now and again, somewhere up in the roof. I have put my umbrella up over the turntable to protect it from further aerial bombardment and, if I remember, I'll take a wander down to one of the specialist hi-fi shops to look for a new turntable cover. I used to have one but Wee Tommy and I broke it one drunken night, testing the point at which more-or-less regularly shaped objects with cavities underneath stopped behaving like frisbees.
Plates; yes. Most hats; yes. Perspex turntable covers; not really.
I threw out both the curried rug and the sheet the pigeon shat on (luckily, I have several cases of Rumanian bedclothes). I could have washed them instead, but my greatcoat had finally become so dirty — following my adventure on the motorway flyover and TB's hairy attempt at copulation — that even my fairly robust sensibilities were becoming offended. So I stuffed the coat into my heavy-duty industrial Czech washing machine and left the pair of them to fight it out.
I didn't have another coat, or even a warm jacket to wear while my coat was in the wash, but I took a look at the weather and decided it wasn't a day for going out anyway. It was a cold, grey day; showers of sleet and hail blew hard over the city, swirling like clouds of frozen white buckshot. A day for staying in.
Besides, I was expecting somebody. No pigeon today; this morning the visitor to my bedroom was an altogether more acceptable one.
I lay on my side, head on hand, watching Betty smoke.
Ah, the following-fornication fag, the post-coital cigarette, the aprés-orgasm gasper. That's the one I miss most of all. Every time Betty lights up I think... just one. Just one, now, for old time's sake. It's allowed; your conscience would understand... but then I think about how I'd feel later. The big G again, rearing its siren head and wanting to be fed.
'Yeah, I spilled some curry yesterday " I said, economising with the truth.
Betty tutted. 'Cannae stand curries. See ma Jack? He'd eat them fur breakfast dinner an tea, so he wid. Basturt used tae smell like a take-away when he didnae smell like a distillery.' She sucked in smoke and held it, obviously enjoying her cigarette. I felt my mouth start to water, but I ignored it. The sheets had slipped off her breasts as she filled her chest, and I was smiling at her rosy nipples. She saw me looking, pulled the sheet back up and said, 'Hi, you,' in a disapproving tone.
Betty is curiously prim in some ways. She won't undress in front of me, and she always pulls the sheets up to cover her chest when she sits up in bed. I find this amusing, almost quaint, but she gets annoyed if I say anything, so I don't. She's been climbing up this tower to this room for the past two and a half years now; two or three times a week as a rule. Keeps me sane, keeps my libido ticking but not boiling over. I really feel quite an affection for her, even if her heart is, as I slightly suspect, pure brass.
Betty is about forty, I think. She won't say. She is petite, she has scrunched up wee toes from far too many pointed shoes, legs she is proud of, and a pale, allowing body. Dyed blonde hair; naturally brown. It's only over the last few months she's told me anything about herself. That wasn't what I was paying for, and none of my business. I think she maintains this rule still with the rest of her clients, but maybe not; we'd all like to think we're special, even when we're just paying for attention.
Maybe it's only because she's been seeing me so long she feels she can talk. I must be boring to her now; we are more like old friends than whore and john. I'm sure at first she was terrified of me; a huge weird-looking guy living in a big church. Nutcase; maybe dangerous. I've always wondered whether she expected my prick to be in proportion to the rest of my body (it isn't, but what a bastard that the one average thing I do have is not the sort of thing you can point to in public and say, 'Look, see? I'm normal! I'm just like you guys!'). I meant to ask her about that, but... I never did get around to it.
She seems to enjoy sex; tells me I'm the only one that makes her come. Somehow, the way she says it, I believe her... but I still half-suspect she says that to all the marks. Maybe I'm just a bad and cynical man, though.
'Have you heard anything from him?'
'That bastard? Not a peep. He can rot.' Betty draws on the fag again. A steely smile crosses her face. 'Ah hope he's missin his curries. They dinnae serve too many a them in the Bar-L.'
Betty's husband is six years into a ten year sentence for assault and armed robbery. He was part of a gang who split a trucker's skull and nicked forty tons of fags from a transport cafe's trailer park. He'd be due out soon if he didn't keep hitting his fellow inmates. Probably after their snout; old habits die hard.
Betty's eyes narrowed. 'Aye, Ah bet there's somethin else the basturt's missin as weel.' She put the fag out in a saucer balanced on her sheet-covered tummy. 'He liked his nookie, did that man. No much good at it, but he liked it. Couldnae go two days withoot it. Wonder whit he's daein aboot that in the jile?' Her face held an unkind smirk. 'Wee chap too; a right hard ticket, but just wee ... an he had dead smooth skin, no much hair... Ah've oftin wondered whit aw they big hard men thought aboot when they saw him take his kegs aff fur the shoors.' She smiled widely at one of the twin peaks her knees made under the bedclothes, plainly imagining her husband stripping in front of twenty large, scarred, sex-starved lifers. I looked away.
He used to knock her about; broke her arm once. I already know all this. He was one of those men — they can't be unique to Glasgow — who know in their hearts that for all their edgy, belligerent llardness they are just unhappy kids, emotional retards. They can drink
and they can fight, but even they know that's not enough, and the only other way they have to prove they're men is by knocking as many weans out of their wives as possible. Betty has an amusing story of being chased round the flat by her Jack; he was after the packet of pills he'd discovered and she'd snatched away from him. He caught her eventually, and threw them on the fire.
Her best story, the one that makes me most angry, but one that she tells with a sort of baleful irony, is of the time she was sent down for three months for soliciting, by a judge who'd been one of her clients.
I was incensed; I'd always regarded the law on prostitution to be almost as stupid, almost as guaranteed to bring law in general into contempt, as the law on drugs (with the laws they still have on homosexuality running a distant third), but to discover an act of such gross, such focused hypocrisy being perpetrated on somebody I knew and liked made the arrant nonsensicality of our supposedly shared values far clearer for me than they ever had been before. I wanted to get that judge's name and expose him; get him, somehow.
Betty couldn't understand why I was so angry. She told me to stop being daft. Occupational hazard. She'd met worse bastards than that. I think she decided then not to risk telling me about some of the really bad experiences she's had, in case I took off after some violent client with an axe.
Anyway, I'm glad she could tell me about that, even if there are all those things she won't talk about. I think she has at least one kid, but she won't talk about that either. Maybe in another few years.
Betty and I have a very simple and satisfactory relationship; we screw, and I pay her. I remember that I used to think that any man who had to pay for it was a rather pathetic creature, and could not understand that quite a few of the rich, not unattractive men that I knew did just that. I think I understand now. The physical need is dealt with, but emotional commitment never even arises. Just a transaction. Easy to get along with. Clean and simple.