by Iain Banks
'Right, sorry, Mr Orr; I was just closing the door. My brother hanging around. Now, where have they moved you to? Can I help? Would you like me to come over there now?'
Orr, you are a fool.
I dress in the clothes of Abberlain Arrol's brother. She arrived here an hour before the time we arranged to meet, with a suitcase full of cast-offclothes, mostly her brother's; she reckons we are near enough the same build. I change while she waits outside. I was loath to leave her in such a vulgar area, but she could hardly have stayed in the room.
In the corridor, she is leaning, back against the wall, one leg drawn up behind her so that she rests one buttock on her foot, arms folded, talking to Mr Lynch, who looks at her with a sort of wary awe.
'"Oh no, dear,"' Abberlaine Arrol is saying, '"we always change ends at half-time."' She sniggers. Mr Lynch looks shocked, then snorts with laughter. Miss Arrol sees me. 'Ah, Mr Orr!'
'The same.' I make a small bow. 'Or rather, not quite.'
Abberlaine Arrol, resplendent in baggy trousers of rough black silk, matching jacket, cotton blouse, high heels and dramatic hat, says, 'What a dashing figure you cut, Mr Orr.'
'Bluntly spoken.'
Miss Arrol presents me with a black cane. 'Your stick.'
'Thank you.' I say. She puts out her arm, waiting, so I offer mine and she takes it. We face Mr Lynch, arm in arm. I can feel her warmth through her brother's jacket.
'Don't we look quite fine, Mr Lynch?' She asks, standing straight, head back. Mr Lynch shuffles his feet.
'Aw yeah; very ... very ...' Mr Lynch searches for a word. 'Very ... a very ... handsome couple.'
I would like to think that is just what we are. Miss Arrol seems pleased, too.
'Thank you, Mr Lynch.' She turns to me. 'Well, I don't know about you, but I'm starving.'
'So, what are your priorities now, Mr Orr?' Abberlaine Arrol rolls her whisky glass around between her hands, gazing through the blue lead glass and the light amber liquid at the flame of a candle. I watch her malt-wetted lips glisten in the same soft light.
Miss Arrol has insisted on buying me dinner. We sit at a window table in the High Girders restaurant. The food has been superb, the service discreetly efficient, we have space, fine wine, and an excellent view (lights twinkle all over the sea where the trawlers anchor the barrage balloons; the blimps themselves are vaguely visible, almost level with us, dull presences in the night reflecting the bridge's massed lights like clouds. A few of the brighter stars are also visible).
'My priorities?' I ask.
'Yes. Which is more important; regaining your position as one of Dr Joyce's favoured patients, or rediscovering your lost memories?'
'Well,' I say, only now really thinking about it. 'Certainly it's been rather uncomfortable and painful, coming down in the bridge, but I suppose I could eventually learn to live with my reduced rank, if the worst comes to the worst.' I sip my whisky. Miss Arrol's expression is neutral. 'However, my inability to remember who I am is not something ...' I give a small laugh, 'that I can ever forget. I'll always know there was something in my life before this, so I imagine I'll always be looking for it. It's like a sealed, forgotten chamber in me; I shan't feel complete until I've discovered its entrance.'
'Sounds like a tomb. Aren't you afraid of what you'll find in there?'
'It's a library; only the stupid and the evil are afraid of those.'
'So you'd rather find your library than regain your apartment?' Abberlaine Arrol smiles. I nod, watching her. She took off her hat as she came in, but her hair is still up; her head and neck look very fine. Those beguiling crinkles under her eyes fascinate me still; they are like a tiny guard she has put up; a line of sandbags beneath those amused, grey-green eyes; confident, secure, unaffected.
Abberlaine Arrol stares into her glass. I am about to comment on a small line that has just formed on her brow, when the lights go out.
We are left with our candle; other tables glow and flicker with their own small flames. Dim emergency lights come on. There is a dull background of muttering. Outside, the lights on the trawlers start to disappear. The balloons are no longer visible in the reflected light of the bridge; the whole structure must be dark. The planes: they come without lights, droning through the night, from the direction of the City. Miss Arrol and I stand up, looking out of the window; various other diners gather alongside us, peering out into the night, shading the weak emergency lights and candles with their hands, noses pressed against the cool glass like schoolboys outside a sweetshop. Somebody opens a window.
The planes sound almost alongside us. 'Can you see them?' Abberlaine Arrol asks.
'No,' I admit. The droning engines sound very close. The planes are quite invisible, without navigation lights. There is no moon, and the stars are not bright enough to show them.
They pass, seemingly unaffected by the lack of light.
'Think they did it?' Miss Arrol says, still peering into the night. Her breath mists the glass.
'I don't know,' I confess. 'I wouldn't be surprised.' She is biting her lower lip; her fists are clenched against the dark window, an expression of excited anticipation on her face. She looks very young.
The lights come back on.
The planes have left their pointless messages; the clouds of smoke are just visible, darkness upon darkness. Miss Arrol sits down and takes up her glass. As I raise mine, she leans con-spiratorially across the table and says quietly. 'To our intrepid aviators, wherever they may come from.'
'And whoever they may be,' I touch her glass with my own.
When we leave, a faint odour of oily smoke is just detectable over the more palatable smells of the restaurant itself; the equivocal signal of the vanished aircraft merging with and blown through the structural grammar of the bridge, like criticism.
We wait for a train. Miss Arrol smokes a cigar. Music plays in the soft-class waiting room. She stretches in her chair and stifles a little yawn. 'I beg your pardon,' she says. Then, 'Mr - oh look; if I can call you John, will you call me Abberlaine, never "Abby"?'
'Certainly, Abberlaine.'
'Right then ... John. I take it you are less than totally delighted with your new accommodation.'
'It's better than nothing at all.'
'Yes, of course, but ...'
'Not that much though. And without Mr Lynch I'd be even more at a loss than I am already.'
'Hmmm. I thought so.' She looks preoccupied, and stares hard at one of her shiny black high-heels. She rubs one finger over her lips, looks seriously at her cigar. 'Ah.' The finger caressing her lips is lifted into the air. 'I have an idea.' Her grin is mischievous now.
'My paternal great-grandfather had it built. Just a minute; I'll find the lights. I think -' There is a dull thud. '-Bastard!' Miss Arrol giggles. I hear a rapid rubbing sound; rough silk between smooth flesh, I suspect.
'Are you all right?'
'Fine. Just bumped my shin. Now then, those lights. I think they're ... no. Damn this, I can't see a thing. You don't have a light do you John? I used my last match on the cigar.'
'I'm sorry, no.'
'I know; could you give me your stick?'
'Certainly. Here. Is that ...? Have you ...?'
'Yes, thank you; got it.' I hear her tap and scrape her way through the darkness. I put my suitcase down on the floor, waiting to see whether my eyes will adjust sufficiently or not. I can see vague hints of light over to one corner, but the interior of this place is quite black. From further away, Abberlaine Arrol's voice comes back, 'It was to be near the marina. That was why he had it built. Then they built the sports centre on top. He was too proud to accept the compensation buy-out, so it stayed in the family. My father is always talking about selling it, but we wouldn't get much for it; we just use it for storage. There was some damp on the ceiling, but it's been repaired.'
'I see,' I listen for the girl, but all I can hear is the sounds of the sea; waves brush the rocks or the piers nearby. I can smell the sea, too; something o
f its fresh dampness pervades the air.
'About bloody time,' Abberlaine Arrol says, her voice muffled. A click, and all is revealed. I am standing near the door of a large apartment, mostly open-plan and split-level and full of old furniture and packing cases. From a high, damp-stained ceiling an assortment of complicated light clusters hang; varnish peels from old, panelled walls. There are white sheets everywhere, half covering ancient, heavy-looking sideboards, wardrobes, couches, chairs, tables and chests of drawers. Other pieces are still totally covered, wrapped and trussed like huge, dusty white presents. Where there were vague areas of light before, there is now a single long screen of blackness where unshuttered windows look out into the night. Abberlaine Arrol appears, flat, broad hat still in place, clapping her hands together, rubbing dust off them, from a side room.
'There, that's a bit better.' She looks around. 'Bit dusty and deserted, but it's quiet, and a bit more private than your room on U7 or wherever.' She hands me back my stick, then starts pacing through the assembled furniture, whipping back sheets and covers, glacing underneath, raising a storm of dust as she investigates the contents of the huge room. She sneezes. 'Should be a bed around here somewhere.' She nods to the windows. 'Might be an idea to close the shutters. It never gets very light in here, but you might be woken in the morning.'
I make my way down to the tall windows, a length of obsidian framed in crackled white paint. The heavy shutters creak as they swing across the dust-dimmed panes. Outside and below I can see a broken line of white surf, and a few lights in the distance, mosdy navigation and harbour beacons. Above, where I would expect to see the bridge, there is only darkness, starless and complete. The waves glitter like a million dull knives.
'Here,' Abberlaine Arrol has found a bed. 'It might be a bit damp, but I'll find some more sheets. Should be some in these cases.' The bed is huge, with a headboard carved from oak to resemble a pair of immense, outspread wings. Abberlaine stamps off through the clouds of dust to rummage through stacked chests and packing cases. I test the bed.
'Abberlaine, this is really very kind of you, but are you sure you won't get into trouble for it?' She sneezes powerfully from a distant packing case. 'Bless you,' I say.
'Thank you. No, I'm not certain,' she says, pulling out blankets and bundles of newspapers from the chest, 'but in the unlikely event my father did find out and was annoyed, I'm sure I could talk him round. Don't worry. No one ever comes down here. Ah.' She discovers a large quilt and some sheets and pillows. She buries her face in the quilt, breathing deeply. 'Yes, this seems dry enough.' She brings the bedding over in a bundle and starts to make the huge bed. I offer to help but am shooed away.
I take my coat off and go in search of the bathroom. It is about six times the size of room 306, level U7. The bath alone looks as though it could float a sizeable yacht. The toilet flushes, the sink runs too, the shower and bidet both spray efficiently. I pause in front of the mirror, brushing my hair back, smoothing my shirt, checking my teeth for bits of trapped food.
When I return to the main room, my bed has been made. The huge oaken wings are spread over a white duvet of duckdown. Abberlaine Arrol has gone. The apartment's front door swings gently to and fro.
I close the door, put out most of the lights. I find an old lamp and perch it on a packing case by the side of my huge, cold bed. Before I put the light out I lie for a while, looking at the great hollow circles long-dried waters have left on the plaster above me.
Faded and dull, left-overs from an old complaint, they look down on me like ancient painted images of my own chest-held stigmata.
I reach out to the old lamp, and turn the darkness on again.
Four
I luv the ded, this old basturt sez to me when I wiz trying to get some innfurmashin out ov him. You fukin old pervirt I sez, gettin a bit fed up by this time enyway, an slit his throate; ah asked you whare the fukin Sleepin Byootie woz, no whit kind a humpin you lyke. No, no he sez, splutterin sumthin awfy and gettin blud all ovir ma new curiearse, no he sez I sed Isle of the Dead; Isle of the Dead that's whare yoo'l find the Sleeping Beauty, but mind and watch out for the - then the basturt went and dyed on me. Fukin nerv, eh? Ah wiz ded upset but thare you go these things are scent to trie uz.
Canny remember whare it wiz I herd about this Sleepin Byootie but it must hav bean sumwhare, ken. Av been gettin arownd a fare bit resently whot with all that majic an that; playce is stowed owt with majishins and wizerds and whitches these days; canny wolk intae sum citays withowt trippin over sum barsturd doin wun aw they spels or incanntashins or turnin sumbudy inta a frog or bumrag or a spitoon or sumhin. Clevir bugirs but ye can hav to mutch majic ah rekin; sum bugirs got tae spred the manure and bild hooses and plant seads an that sort ov stuff, ken? Things that majic duzney wurk very well on. Fyne fur hydin gold and turnin peepil intae things thayd rathir no be turnd intae an maykin foalk furget things an that sort ov stuf, but no fur fixin a bugerd waggin wheel or sloppin the mud oot yer detachit hovil aftir the rivir's burst itz banks. Dinnae ask me how majic wurks maybe ther's onlie so mutch to go round or peepil who can do it keep majicin up things that cantsel out whit uthers have dun, but wun way or the uthir it canny be oll its craked up tae be or ah suppose the wurld woold be toatally fukin wunderffil an happy an aw that an folk woold live in peece an harminy an so on; thatill be the day, if ye ask me. Enyway its no like that ataw, so it isnay, an just as well to say I, coz utherwyse thay wooldnae need peepil like me (an itid be ded fukin boarin to).
Noaw, ahm doin no to bad these days; servises mutch in dimand like thay say; maynly becoz all these wizerds an that are so fukin sofistikaytit that they forget thers sum things a sord can do a spel canny, speshily when yoor oponent is only expectin a spel and no a sord! Aw, ahve got sum majic armir an this enchantit dirk that thinks itz a daggir and stuff like that, butt ah doant like tae use them hings to mutch; bettir to relie on yer own arm an a sharp blaide, thats whit I say.
My first is in day but never in night,
My second's in dark but unseen in light;
My middle's a twin in daughter, not son,
While the fifth's not in two, but in three and one;
The final's in first, not middle or last,
And my whole is in sheath; got an Elastoplast?
Nevir mind that its just the fukin dirk talkin; the ansers daggir bye the way; just that the stupit thing canny spel write. Bludy daft wee hi-pitched voyce its got too, reely gets on ma nerves sumtimes, but the things cum in handy on a few okayzhins; it can see in the dark an tel whose frend and fowe an a coupil of times ahl sware its jumpt rite out of ma hands an flown like a bird intae sum basturts throat that was givin me a hard time. Usefyule gadjet. A lassy geeze it; a bonny yung whitch sum worlok had the hots fur an she didnae want tae play; ah wiz hired tae kil the old bugir and the young whitch giv us the daggir fir a reward; sed it wiz oanly a copey, but it came from the fewtcher an might cum in yousefyul; that wiznae ma only reward either. See these whitches? Fukin majic in bed, to. Must look her up agen sumtime.
Enyway, ah herd about this Sleepin Byootie sumwhare an startit tyrin to find out whare she wiz shakked up but it wiznae eesy. Fyneally got a haud of this old basturd that telt us about the Ile of the Deid but then went an kilt him befoar he coold tell uz all he coold have; to fukin hastie, thats ma truble, awlways tias been Dut ye canny teech an old dug new tricks like they say. Not that am that old; dont ge me rong ye have to be yung and fit to be a sordsman (maybe that wiz whot the whitch - but nevir mind that). Whare woz I? Aw I; the ileland ov the deid.
Wel, too cut a long story off at the knees, an after meny ecsiting adventchures an that, I endit up gettin this sorserir tae cunjur up a way intae sumthin called the Underwurld; ment roasting live cats over a slow fyre fur abouwt three weeks, but at leest it wurkt. The sorserir gave me directshins an sum advyce an that, but ah had a nippy heid at the time coz and been drinkin the wine the night befoar an so ah didnae reelly take in aw he wiz sayin an besides ah woz all ecsited
coz ah wiz getting tae go intae the Underground at last. 'Beware Lethe, the waters of oblivion, young man!' the sorserir sez, an ahm stand in thare in the cellir ov his castle wi ma heid loupin thinkin Ah wish yed said that tae me last night befoar ah startit drinking the wine. 'Beware whit?' ah sez tae him. 'Lethe!' he shouts. 'Aye, OK pal,' ah told him, and steppt intae this funny star-shaped thing hed paynted on the flair ov the cellir.
Hellova a place this, ah thoght. Aw these folke shoutin and screamin an waylin and champin there teath an chained to wals and tunnils; whot a fukin racket an me with a hangover. Got reely pissed aff an tryd killin a few a these noisey basturts but even when they wer hakked about they still kept on shoutin and screemin an thrashin an that; toatal waiste of time. Ah kept on goin doon these tunnels and saw aw these burnin pits an icey puddles wi screemin peepil in them, an kept ma sord handy an wished ahd brot a bottil of skoosh wi me coz I wiz ded thirsty.
Had tae wolk fur fukin miles so ah did; kept thinkin ther might be a train along in a minute, but nae luck, just all these basturts howlin an screemin oll the time and lodes of smoake and flaimes an ice an howlin winds an fuk knows whot. Ah thot about having a drink aw watter from won of the icey pools but ah kept thinkin abowt this watter of Leeth or whatevir it woz, so ah didnae.
It got qwieter after a whyle; went up this long tunnil intae sumhin a bit mair like daylight thogh it wis still pritty dull an depressin; endid up at the bottom of this big clif lookin out ovir this rivir wi clouds an mist an that aw ovir the playce. No a bludy soul abowt, no even wun aw those bubblin basturts chained to the waws or anyhin. Startin tae think the sorserir had givven us a bum steer. Stil ded thirtsy an nota sign of a pub or enyhin, just aw these rocks an this rivir flowin slowly past. Ah wanderd along the bank fur a bit an found this punter shovin a big round boulder up this hill. Lookt like he did this a lot, judjin from the groov hed worn in the hillside. 'Haw Jimmy,' ah sez, 'ahm lookin for this ferry; whare dae ye catch the steamer aboot here? There a pier here-aboots, aye?' Basturt didnae even turn roond. Rold this huge fukin chuckie right tae the tap aw the hill. But the the rok cums rollin aw the way back down agen, and the ignorant buggir chases aftir it an starts rollin it back up the hill agen. 'Hi you,' ah sez (didnae hav eny effect). 'Hi, hied-die-baw; whare's the fukin pier fur the steamer?' Ah slapt the basturd over the arse wi the flat ov ma sord and went in frunt of the big stane he was rollin up the hil an lent agenst it to stop him.