by Iain Banks
She helped him decorate the house, bullying him into a complete new scheme.
He was up a ladder, painting an elaborate ceiling rose one evening, when he felt a sudden, dizzying surge of déjà vu. He put the brush down. Andrea was in the next room whistling away to herself. He recognised the tune: The River. He stood on the ladder, in the echoing, empty room, and remembered standing in a wide room full of sheet-draped furniture in the house in Moray Place a year earlier, dressed in the same paint-spotted clothes, listening to her whistle in another room, and feeling enormously, simply happy. I am a lucky bastard, he thought. I have so much, so much around me that is good. Not everything; I still want more, I probably want more than I could handle; in face I probably want things that would only make me unhappy if I had them. But even that's OK; that's still part of the contentment.
If my life was a film, he thought, I'd roll the credits now; fade on this beatific smile in an empty room, the man on a ladder making things better, renovating, improving. Cut. Print. The End.
Well, he told himself, it isn't a film, laddie. He was filled with a surge of pure joy, simple delight at being where and who he was and knowing the people he did. He threw the paint brush into one corner of the room, jumped off the ladder, and ran through to Andrea. She was rolling paint onto a wall. 'God, I thought you'd fallen off the ladder. What's the cheesy grin for?'
'I just remembered,' he said, taking the roller out of her hand and chucking it behind him, 'we haven't christened this room.'
'Well, neither we have. Must remember the smell of paint does this to you.'
They screwed up against the wall, just for a change. Her shirt stuck to the wet paint; she laughed until the tears ran down her face.
He had become a film buff. During the last festival they'd both gone to more films than plays or concerts, and he suddenly realised he'd missed out on hundreds of films he'd heard of and wanted to see. He joined a film society, he bought a video recorder and scoured video shops for films. Whenever business took him down to London he'd try to cram in as many cinema visits as possible. He liked almost everything; he just liked going to the cinema.
A Scottish group called the Tourists had some chart success; their lead singer went on to become half of the Eurythmics. People would ask if he was related to her. No such luck, he sighed.
There were soft voices, nice bums. Andrea had her various flings, and he tried not to feel jealous. It isn't jealousy, he told himself; it's more like envy. And fear. One of them may be a nicer, kinder, better man that I am, and more loving.
She was out of circulation for almost two weeks once, having some sort of time-lapse relationship with a young lecturer from Heriot Watt which went from love-at-first-sight to slammed doors, thrown ornaments and smashed windows over the space of twelve days. He missed her, while all this was going on. He took the second week off and headed north-west. The Range Rover and GTi had been supplemented by a Ducatti; he had a one-man tent, a Himalayan standard sleeping bag and all the best hiking gear; he took the bike roaring up to the western highlands and spent days walking alone in the hills.
When he got back, she'd finished with the lecturer. He talked to her on the phone, but she seemed curiously reluctant to see him; he worried, he didn't sleep well. When he did see her, a week later, there was a fading yellow stain round her left eye. He only noticed it because she forgot to keep her dark glasses on in the pub. 'Ah,' she said. 'Is that why you wouldn't see me?' he asked her. 'Don't do anything,' she said. 'Please. It's all over and I could happily throttle him but you lay a finger on him and I'll never speak to you again.' 'We do not all,' he told her coldly, 'resort to violence quite that quickly. You might have trusted me; I've been worried sick the past week.' Then he wished he hadn't said that, because she broke down, and hugged him and cried, and he realised something of what she must have gone through; he felt mean and selfish for adding to her cares. He stroked her hair while she sobbed into his chest. 'Come on home, lass,' he said to her.
He took to the hills a few more times, using the occasions when she went to Paris to get away from Edinburgh and out to islands and the mountains, stopping off to see his father on the way there and back. He was camped one sunset on the slopes of Beinn a' Chaisgein Mor - there was a bothy nearby, but he preferred to pitch the tent if it was good weather - looking out over Fionn Loch and the small causeway he'd be crossing tomorrow to the mountains on the far side, when he suddenly thought: just as he hadn't been to Paris, in all these years neither had Gustave ever visited Edinburgh.
Ahhh. Maybe it was just the effects of the last joint, but in that instant, though they were a thousand miles apart, and all those unshared years away, he felt curiously close to the Frenchman he'd never met. He laughed into the cool highland air; the breeze moved the flanks of the tent like breath.
One of his earliest memories was of mountains, and an island. His mum and dad, his youngest sister and he had gone to Arran for their holidays; he had been three years old. As the steamer paddled down the glittering river towards the distant blue mass of the island, his dad had pointed out the Sleeping Warrior; the way the mountain range at the north end of the island looked like a helmed soldier, lying over the landscape, mighty and fallen. He'd never forgotten that sight, or the medley of accompanying sounds: calling gulls, the slap-slap of the steamer's paddles; an accordion band playing somewhere aboard, people laughing. It also gave him his first nightmare: his mum had to wake him up, in the bed he was sharing with his sister in the guest house; he'd been crying and whimpering. In his dream, the great stone warrior had woken up, and come slowly, terribly, crushingly, to kill his parents.
Mrs and Ms Cramond made the most of their big house; they had social evenings, they entertained; their parties became moderately celebrated. They would put people up; poets giving readings at the university, a visiting painter trying to sell some work to a gallery, a writer the book shop had invited to a signing session. Some evenings there would be a whole circle of people he didn't recognise at the place; they usually looked less well-off than Andrea's friends, and tended to eat and drink a lot more. Mrs Cramond spent half the day, it seemed, baking cakes and quiches and bread. He worried that even in her widowhood Mrs Cramond was still spending all her time in her kitchen making things for people, but Andrea told him not to be stupid; her mother loved seeing people enjoy something she'd made. He accepted this but watched some of the itinerant denizens of the house stuff cakes and the odd bottle of wine into coat pockets with a nagging sense of vicarious exploitation.
'These people are intellecutals,' he told Andrea once. 'You're starting a salon; you're becoming a goddamned blue stocking!'
She just smiled.
Andrea bought a litter of four Siamese cats from a friend. One died; she renamed the two males Franklin and Phineas and the sleek female Fat Freddie; damned nostalgia, he called it. Somebody gave Mrs Cramond a King Charles spaniel; she called it Cromwell.
Just getting ready to go round to the house was enough to make him feel good; driving there would produce an almost childlike thrill in him; the house was another home, a warm and hospitable place. Sometimes, especially when he'd had a few to drink, he had to fight an absurd feeling of sentimentality at the bond between mother and daughter.
He added a Citroen CX to the GTi and the Range Rover, then sold all three and bought an Audi Quattro. He went out to Yemen on business, and stood once in the ruins that had been Mocha, on the shore of the Red Sea; he saw the warm wind from Africa move the sand grains round his feet, and sensed the steady harsh indifference of the desert, its calm continuance, the spirit of those ancient lands. He stroked his hand over the age-worn, pitted stones, and watched where the waves fell blue, exploding white fists of silk thunder on the open, golden palm of the shore.
Things went on; Lennon got shot, Dylan got religion. He could never decide which depressed him most. He was working in Yemen when the Israelis invaded southern Lebanon because a man was shot in London, and when the Argentinians went as
hore at Port Stanley. He didn't learn that his brother, Sammy, was with the Task Force until after it had sailed. When he got back to Edinburgh he argued with his friends; sure the Argentinians ought to have the bloody islands, he said, but how the hell could revolutionary parties support a fascist junta's own little piece of imperialism? Why did there always have to be a right side and wrong one? Why not just say, A curse on both your houses?
His brother came back, unhurt. He still had arguments about the war; with Sammy, his dad, his radical friends. By the time the next election came round, he was starting to think maybe his pals had been right after all.
'Awww, come on!' he said, despairing. Another healthy Labour majority wiped out, votes leeched by the SDP; another surprise Conservative win. The pundits were predicting the Tories would get less of the vote than last time, but increase their majority by a hundred seats, perhaps more. 'Aww fuck!'
'This is becoming monotonous,' Andrea said, reaching for the whisky. Margaret Thatcher appeared on the television screen, glowing with victory.
'Off!' he screamed, hiding under the sheets. Andrea stabbed at the remote control unit; the screen went dark. 'Oh ... God," he said from beneath the sheets. 'And don't talk to me about my top rate of tax'
'Never said a word, kid'
Tell me it's all just a bad dream.'
'It's all just a bad dream.'
'Really? Is it?'
'Hell no, it's real; I was just telling you what you wanted to hear.'
'Those idiots!' he fumed to Stewart. 'Another four years with that dingbat in charge! Christ al-fucking-mighty! A senile clown surrounded by a gang of xenophobic reactionaries!'
'Unelected xenophobic reactionaries,' Stewart pointed out. Ronald Reagan had just been elected for another term; half the people who could have voted in the election, hadn't.
'Why don't I get a vote?' he raged. 'My dad lives spitting distance from Coulport, Faslane and the Holy Loch; if that buffoon's liver-spotted finger hits the button my old man's dead; probably all of us are; you, me, Andrea, Shona, and the kids; everybody I love ... so why the fuck don't I get a vote?'
'No annihilation without representation,' Stewart said, thoughtfully. Then, 'Still, on the subject of unelected reactionaries, what d'you think the Politbureau is?'
'A fucking sight more responsible than that squad of gung-ho shitheads'
'... Aye, fair enough. Your round."
The house at Moray Place, residence of Mrs and Ms Cramond, was now quite well known, especially at festival time. You couldn't walk into the place without tripping over some up-and-coming artist, or an authoritative new voice in Scottish fiction, or some moody kids with acne who dragged synths and practice amps from room to room, and commandeered the Revox for days at a time. The Last Chance Salon, he called it. Andrea had settled down to a life she found thoroughly fine; still working in the shop, translating Russian books, writing articles, playing the piano, drawing and painting, socialising and partying, visiting pals, holidaying in Paris, going to films and concerts and plays with him, and to the opera and ballet with her mother.
Meeting her one day at the airport, after another jaunt to Paris, he watched her; she walked confidently, head up, out of Customs; she wore a broad, bright red hat, brilliant blue jacket, red skirt, blue tights and shiny red leather boots. Her eyes sparkled, her skin glowed; her face broadened into a wide smile when she saw him. She was thirty-three years old and she had never looked better. He felt, at that instant, an odd amalgam of emotions; love certainly, but also envious admiration. He envied her her happiness, her assurance, her calm way with the troubles and traumas of life, the way she treated everything as one might treat a child making up a story the child really believed in; not patronisingly, but with the same mock-serious frown, the same mixture of ironic detachment and affection, even love. He remembered his talks with the advocate, and could see something of the old man's personality in Andrea.
You're a lucky woman Andrea Cramond, he thought, as she took his arm, there in the airport lounge. Not because of me, and not as lucky as me in one way, because I have more of your time than anybody else, but otherwise ...
Let it go on, he thought. Don't let the idiots blow up the world and don't let anything else terrible happen. Steady, kid; who are we talking to here? He sold the bike soon afterwards. His father fell and broke his hip that winter. He looked very small and frail when he visited him in hospital, and much older. In the spring he needed a hernia operation, and fell again, not long after he'd left hospital. He broke a leg and a collar bone. 'Have tae take mair waiter with it,' he told his son, and refused to come and live with him in Edinburgh, because his friends were here. Morag and her husband also offered to take him in, and Jimmy wrote from Australia to say why didn't he come out for a few months? But the old man didn't want to move from his own area. He was in hospital for longer this time, and when they let him out he couldn't put back on the weight he'd lost. A home-help came round every morning. She found him, apparently asleep, by the fire one day, a small smile on his face. It had been his heart, too. The doctor said he probably hadn't felt a thing.
He found himself organising everything, not that there was very much to do. His brothers and sisters all made it to the funeral, even Sammy, on compassionate leave, and Jimmy all the way from Darwin. He had asked Andrea if she minded not coming; she said no, and understood. Once it was all over, it was good to go back to her, back to Edinburgh and work. He never did entirely lose the feeling of numbness which crept over him when he thought about the old man, and though he shed no tears, he knew he'd loved him, and did not feel guilty about that dry grief.
'Ah, my poor orphan,' Andrea said, and was his comfort.
The company expanded; more people joined. They bought grand new offices in the New Town. He argued with the others about their employees' salaries; they should all have a share, he said; they should all be partners.
'What,' the other two said, 'a workers' collective?' They smiled tolerantly. 'Why the hell not?' he said. They were both SDP supporters; worker participation was one of the ideas the Alliance liked. They said no, but started a bonus scheme.
Then one day Andrea got off a Paris flight and she wasn't smiling, and his guts seemed to lurch. Oh no, he thought. What is it? What's wrong?
She wouldn't talk about it, whatever it was. She said there was nothing wrong but she looked very solemn and thoughtful most of the time, laughed little, and would often look up, distracted, say sorry and have to have repeated to her the last thing somebody had said. He worried. He thought about phoning Gustave in Paris and asking what the hell was wrong with her, what had happened, there?
He didn't call. He fretted, and tried to entertain her, taking her out to dinner to see a film or over to see Stewart and Shona; he tried to organize a nostalgic evening, eating at the Loon Fung, near his old flat in Canonmills, then taking a taxi to the Canny Man's, but nothing worked. He couldn't decide what it was. Mrs Cramond and he worried together, and individually tried to get the truth out of her. It was the mother who did, though only after three months and another two visits to Paris. Andrea told her mother what was wrong, then went back to France again. Mrs Cramond rang him up. MS, she told him. Gustave had multiple sclerosis.
'Why didn't you tell me?' he asked her.
'I don't know,' she said, listlessly, eyes dull, voice flat. 'I don't know. And I don't know what to do; he's got nobody to look after him, not properly ..." When he heard those words, a chill settled in him. Poor guy, he thought, and meant it; but once found himself thinking, It's so slow, why couldn't he die quickly? And hated himself for the thought.
Another argument; during the '84 strike he refused to cross a miners' picket line; the company lost a contract.
Andrea spent more and more time in Paris; less people came to the house at Moray Place now. She looked tired whenever she came back from France, and though she was still slow to anger, and still easy with people, she was slow to laugh now as well, and guarded about taking any enj
oyment at face value. When they made love, he thought he could detect an extra tenderness in her, and a sense of how precious and impermanent such moments were. It was less fun than it used to be, but somehow the act had gained an extra resonance, become in itself a sort of language.
Sometimes when she was away in Paris he would get lonely sitting in the big house by himself, reading or watching the television or working at the drawing board; if he'd had less than the legal limit to drink he would take the Quattro out and drive to North Queensferry to sit beneath the great dark bridge, listening to the water lap against the stones and the trains rumble overhead; he would smoke a joint or just breathe the fresh air. If he felt pity for himself, it was only one timid, tentative part of his mind that felt so; there was another part of him which seemed like a hawk or an eagle; hungry and cruel and fanatically keen-eyed. Self-pity lasted a matter of seconds in the open; then the bird of prey fell on it, tearing it, ripping it.
The bird was the real world, a mercenary dispatched by his embarrassed conscience, the angry voice of all the people in the world, that vast majority who were worse off than he was; just common sense.
He discovered, to his knowing, almost righteous dismay, that the bridge was not painted end-to-end over a neat three-year period. It was done piecemeal, and the cycle lasted anything between four and six years. Another myth bites the dust, he thought; par for the course.