The Business

by Iain Banks

  'Well, she does seem kind of committed to her bed, Suvinder.'

  'I know.' He shivered. 'That is what's so scary.'

  He did touch me that evening, but only in a friendly, companionable way, taking my arm as we walked to our respective rooms. No attempt at a kiss or anything. Just as well: I was set for a struggle with that damn hammock, though once I was in it was very comfortable.

  The next day was the last. We headed back towards Thuhn on a fine, clear, cold day and had a picnic lunch in the ruins of the old monastery at Trisuhl.

  Langtuhn Hemblu unpacked the little table and two chairs, set the places, arranged the food and brewed a pot of Earl Grey tea, then went off to visit a relation who lived nearby.

  The trees growing within the walls rustled where their tops stuck out into the light breeze, and little rose finches and redstarts hopped and jumped around us, almost but not quite accepting morsels of food from my hand. Choughs called out, their cries echoing in the empty shell of walls.

  Suvinder chattered a little, and spilled some tea on the table, which was not like him. I felt content and harmonious with everything. I had mixed feelings about heading back to Thuhn and I was surprised to find that, while I was certainly looking forward to getting back to my e-mails and phones, if anything — given the chance — I'd have chosen to continue the tour round Thulahn. But, then, it was a small country. There was not much more to see, perhaps. And I'd been lucky to have had the undivided attention of somebody with as many responsibilities and calls upon his time as the Prince.

  It was the sort of time when it paid to remember what Mrs Telman had said, back in the hotel room at Vevey that night. Appreciate at the time, enjoy the moment, count your blessings.

  'Kathryn,' Suvinder said, placing his teacup down. Somehow, I just knew we were suddenly in formal territory.

  I turned from feeding the little birds to sit square and upright. Plumped up in our thermal jackets, we faced each other across the little table.

  'Your Highness,' I said. I clasped my hands on the table.

  He addressed them rather than my face. 'Have you enjoyed the last few days?'

  'Immensely, Suvinder. One of the best holidays I've ever had.'

  He looked up, smiling. 'Really?'

  'Of course really. How about you?'

  'What?'

  'Have you enjoyed yourself?'

  'Well, of course.'

  'There you are, then. Hurrah for us.'

  'Yes. Yes.' He was looking at my hands again. 'You have enjoyed my company, I hope?'

  'Very much indeed, Prince. You've been the perfect host. I'm very grateful for your time. I feel very…favoured. I just hope your subjects don't resent me monopolising you for so long.'

  He waved one hand dismissively. 'Good. Good, I…I'm glad to hear that. Very glad to hear that. Kathryn, I…' He exhaled suddenly, an exasperated expression on his face, and sat back, slapping the table. 'Oh, this is no good. I will come right out with it.' He looked me in the eye.

  And, dolt that I am, I swear that I still had absolutely no idea what was coming next.

  'Kathryn,' he said, 'will you marry me?'

  I stared at him. For a while. 'Wi — Will I…?' I said, eloquently. Then I felt my eyes narrow. 'Are you serious?'

  'Of course I am serious!' the Prince squeaked, then looked surprised. 'Of course,' he said, in a normal voice.

  'I…I…Suvinder…Prince…I…'

  He searched my eyes. 'Oh, dear, this has been a complete surprise to you, hasn't it?'

  I nodded. 'Well, ah, yes.' I gulped. 'I mean, it is.'

  'Have I made a complete fool of myself, Kathryn?' he asked, his gaze dropping.

  'Prince, I…' I took a deep breath. How do you really, clearly, kindly say to someone you've come to like — even like quite a lot — that you just don't love them and so, no, of course you don't want to marry them? 'No, of course you haven't made a fool of yourself, Suvinder. I'm very, very flattered that you —'

  He turned sideways in his seat, crossing his legs and arms and casting his gaze to the sky. 'Oh, Prince,' I said, recalling the drunken call in Blysecrag a few weeks earlier. 'I know people have said this sort of thing to you before, used these words. But I mean it. I'm not just trying to be kind. I like you a lot, and I know how much you must have…but hold on. I mean, you can't marry a commoner anyway, can you?'

  'I can marry whom I like,' he said resentfully, scratching at the tablecloth with one fingernail as though trying to remove an invisible stain. 'My mother and anybody else can go hang. Tradition implies I must marry a princess or someone similar, but there is nothing but this…succession of precedents. From an age when there were many more princesses around. This is the twentieth century. My God, it is almost the twenty-first century. I am not unpopular. I have taken the precaution, even though I have resented it, of gauging the reaction of people to you. Ordinary people seem to like you. My ministers do. The Rinpoche Beies was most taken with you and thought we would be most happy. So it would be a popular match.' He sighed. 'But I should have known.'

  'Hold on, they don't know, do they?'

  He glanced at me. 'Of course. Well, not the ordinary people. But I told the cabinet members in the plane on the way to Thuhn, and the Rinpoche before the reception the other night.'

  'Oh, my god.' I sat back, stunned. I remembered them all nodding at me, smiling and nodding at me. They weren't just being friendly. They were sizing me up!

  'What about your mother?'

  'Her I was leaving till later,' Suvinder admitted.

  An appalling suspicion began to form in my mind. 'Who else knows?' I asked, keeping my voice cold and flat.

  He turned to me. ' A few people. Not many. All most discreet.' He sounded bitter as he said, 'Why? Are you so ashamed that I have asked you to marry me?'

  'I said I was flattered. I think I still am, but I mean does anybody in the Business know?'

  He looked defensive. 'I don't know. No, I mean, one or two, perhaps, knew that I, that I might…' His voice trailed off.

  I stood up. 'This was all meant, wasn't it?'

  He rose too, reaching out to take my hands in his while his napkin fell to the grass. 'Oh, Kathryn!' he cried. 'Do you really think so?'

  I jerked my hands away. 'No, by the Business, you idiot!'

  He looked mystified and hurt. 'What do you mean?'

  I stood there and looked very carefully into his eyes. There was a lot of stuff going through my mind in those moments, none of it nice and some of it positively paranoid. So this was what they meant by thinking on your feet. 'Prince,' I said eventually, 'is this the way the Business makes sure that Thulahn is really theirs? By having me marry you? Did they suggest this? Did any of them — Dessous, Cholongai, Hazleton - did they even hint that this might be a good idea?'

  Suvinder looked as if he was about to weep. 'Well, not…'

  'Not in so many words?' I suggested.

  'Well, I think they know I…that I have very strong feelings for you. I did not…And they did not…'

  I don't think I have ever seen a man look so abject.

  Sometimes you just have to trust your feelings. I reached out and took his hand. 'Suvinder, I'm sorry that the answer is no. I like you, and I hope you will stay my friend, and I accept that it was a sincere offer, from the heart. And I'm sorry I called you an idiot.'

  His eyes glistened as they looked at me. He gave a small and sorry smile, then lowered his head until I couldn't see his eyes. 'I'm sorry I didn't protest when you did,' Suvinder mumbled at the table. I looked down at the white tablecloth, in the man's shadow, directly under his face. A clear droplet hit the linen surface, darkening it and spreading. He turned away with a sniff and walked off a little way, pulling a handkerchief from his pocket.

  'Suvinder?'

  'Yes?' he said, still not turning to look at me. He blew his nose.

  'I am so sorry.

  He waved one hand and shrugged. He carefully folded the handkerchief again.

/>   'Look,' I said, 'why not tell people that I'm thinking about it?'

  He looked back with a smile. 'What would be the point of that?'

  'It might…No, you're right, it's a stupid idea.'

  He returned to the table, pocketing the hanky and taking a deep breath, his head high. 'Oh, look at us, eh? I am ashamed at myself for spoiling a perfectly good picnic, ruining a most pleasant holiday.'

  'You haven't ruined anything, Suvinder,' I said, as he held my seat for me.

  'Good. I must say, I'm still hungry. Let us eat, shall we?'

  'Let's.'

  He hesitated as he was about to take his seat. 'May I say one more thing? Then I promise never to raise the subject again.'

  'All right.'

  'I think I love you, Kathryn.' He paused. 'But that is not why I asked you to marry me.'

  'Oh,' I said.

  'I asked you to marry me because I think you will make a wonderful wife and because you are somebody I can imagine being with for the rest of my life, when perhaps love, of a sort, of a very important and special sort, might grow between us. I think it is wonderfully romantic to marry for love alone, but I have seen so many people do so and live to regret it. There are some lucky people, no doubt, for whom everything works out just perfectly, but I have never met any. For most people, I think, to marry for love is to marry…at the summit, as it were. It must be downhill from there on. To marry for other reasons, with one's head and not just one's heart, is to embark on a different sort of journey, uphill, I suppose,' he said, looking embarrassed. 'My goodness, I do not choose my metaphors so well, do I? But it is a journey which offers the hope that things will become gradually better and better between the people concerned.' He spread his hands and gave a sharp sort of laugh. 'There. My thoughts on the Western romantic marriage ideal. I did not put it, or rather them, very well, but there you are. No more.'

  'You put it just fine, Suvinder,' I told him.

  'I did?' he said, pouring some more tea from the padded pot. 'Oh, good. Please, another sandwich? We cannot feed them all to the birds.'

  Even moving higher than Thuhn, scaling tracks that seemed to zigzag up for ever to still higher valleys, you could find yourself beneath the lowest limit of an animal's domain; snow leopards that lived perpetually above the tree line and bharals that even in winter never descended below four thousand metres.

  'You what? You go to this remote Himalayan kingdom, the Prince proposes to you and you turn him down? Are you fucking insane?'

  'Of course I turned him down. I don't love him.'

  'Ah, so what? Say yes anyway. What girl gets a chance to marry a prince these days? Think of your grandchildren!'

  'I don't want grandchildren. I don't want children!'

  'Yes, you do.'

  'No, I don't.'

  'You do too. No one's mileage varies that much.'

  'I'm telling you I don't, dammit!'

  'Yeah, right.'

  'Luce, I wouldn't lie to you. I've never lied to you.'

  'Oh, come on, you must have. I'm your girlfriend, not your analyst.'

  'What a terrible attitude! And I don't even have an analyst.'

  'Exactly.'

  'What do you mean "exactly"?'

  'That just shows how much you need one.'

  'What? Not having an analyst shows how much I need an analyst?'

  'Yes.'

  'You're mad.'

  'Yeah, but at least I've got an analyst.'

  Slow-gliding in the air above them all slid the wing-spread shapes of the bone-eating lammergeiers, forever cruising the blade-thin winds that sliced across the frozen peaks.

  'Mr Hazleton?'

  'Kathryn?'

  'I just had a funny thought.'

  'Funny? How do you mean? I thought you'd be ringing about Freddy —'

  'Mr Hazleton, I've just received a proposal of marriage from the Prince. Am I supposed to…What about Freddy?'

  'You haven't heard? Oh dear. He was in a car crash. He's in — what do they call it nowadays? — Intensive Care. Kathryn, I'm very sorry to be the one to tell you, but they don't seem to think he's going to make it. He was asking to see you. Though, I don't know, by the time you'd be able to get there…'

  Suddenly I remembered — or half-remembered — a joke Uncle Freddy had told me once, something about a man, a fanatical hunter who was a great marksman with a double-barrel shotgun and was forever bagging vast quantities of grouse and pheasant but who in the end went mad and sincerely thought he was the piece of cotton on the end of a length of string that shotgun owners use to clean out the barrels of their guns. The punchline was his wife saying, 'But, Doctor, do you think he'll pull through?' This had sent Uncle Freddy into a tearful, knee-slapping frenzy; I could still see him hooting and guffawing and bending and struggling to catch his breath through his laughter.

  I said, 'Tell them I'm on my way.'

  CHAPTER TEN

  I fussed and fretted throughout the rest of that evening and into the night, making calls, sending e-mails, trying to sleep, not sleeping. Suvinder looked shaken when he heard about Uncle Freddy. He arranged for the Twin Otter to bring forward its flight the next day: it would leave at dawn from Dacca and turn around as quickly as possible. Luckily the weather forecast was fairly benign. Tommy Cholongai's Lear wasn't available but there would be a company Gulfstream waiting for me at Siliguri by noon.

  The Prince had to pay a belated visit to his mother that evening. I spent most of the time in my room on the phone; my little quilted chattering lady, who was called Mrs Pelumbu, brought me a meal, though I didn't eat much.

  I called Leeds General, the hospital in the UK where Uncle Freddy had been taken, and eventually persuaded them that I was both a relation and that I was the 'Kate' that Freddy kept asking to see. He was in Intensive Therapy, as Hazleton had said.

  A road traffic accident on the A64, two days earlier, during heavy rain. Four other casualties, two discharged, others not in danger. They wouldn't actually tell me how bad he was straight out, but they did say if I wanted to see him I should get there as soon as I could.

  I tried Blysecrag. Miss Heggies answered.

  'How bad is he, Miss H?'

  'I…They…He…You…'

  Miss H was reduced to little more than personal pronouns. The small amount of sense I did manage to get out of her only confirmed that Uncle Freddy was very poorly indeed, and in a sense I didn't even need that; just hearing how emotional and distraught this former paragon of stainless rectitude had become was enough to tell me things must be fairly desperate (it also made me wonder if she and Uncle Freddy…well, never mind).

  Hi, Stephen. Lost Event Horizon here.

  Kathryn, I heard about Freddy Ferrindonald. Can you get back there to see him? Is there anything I can do?

  I'm starting back tomorrow, weather permitting. You can tell me what the word is in-company. Any details?

  Yep, thought you might ask, so I found all this out. He was driving to some place on the coast nearby- Scarboro? - during the evening; it was raining, he skidded on a corner and hit a car coming in the opposite direction. Wouldn't have been too bad but the whatever he was driving was so old it didn't have a seat-belt; apparently he went through the windscreen and ended up wrapped round a tree or a bush or something. Lot of head and internal injuries. We'd have got him to one of our hospitals - we had a Swiss air ambulance waiting at the local airport for him the next morning - but he's in too bad a way to move. Kathryn, I'm sorry, but from what I hear he isn't even fifty-fifty. He keeps asking for you. I think Miss H's nose is out of joint, and not just because he's not asking for her. Apparently there's another woman there keeping vigil; this is the party he was on his way to visit in Scarboro.

  Uncle F had a fancy woman. Well, that figures. Look, thanks for collating all that stuff. Do we have anybody on the ground I can contact?

  Lady called Marion Craston, an L5 from GCM. She's at the bedside too. Well, there or thereabouts. In case he changes his will or
something, I guess, but also just to have a co. presence too, most likely.

  (Gallentine Cident-Muhel- London, Genève, New York, Tokyo — are our lawyers. Wholly owned.)

  Thanks. We have a number for her?

  I called Marion Craston at the hospital in Leeds. She wasn't much help; the epitome of lawyerly obfuscation. Basically she confirmed what I already knew. The line was very clear and I could hear that she was still clicking and tapping away on a keyboard as she talked, sort of absentmindedly, to me. This I did not appreciate.

  After I hung up I sat for a few seconds thinking about calling GCM and getting her replaced with somebody else, then decided I was upset and possibly just taking it out on her. I had done the same sort of thing myself on occasion (though not when the person I was talking to was a couple of levels above me in the corporate hierarchy; I'd always given them my full attention). But what the hell; one could be too severe.

  'Hi again. So, want my analyst's number?'

  'No, I do not. Listen, more tribulations.'

  I told Luce about Uncle F.

  'They have autos without seat-belts? Jesus . I suppose it was a right pea-souper, oi, guv'nor?'

  'Will you stop that? The poor old bastard's at death's door and all you can do is come on like Dick Van Dyke.'

  'Okay, I'm sorry.'

  'The car's a classic. Or was. That's why it didn't have a seat-belt.'

  'I've said I'm sorry. Don't go all prickly-Brit defensive on me. But why does the old guy want to see you? Were you that close?'

  'Well, fairly. I was like a daughter to him. I guess.'

  'Yeah, like a daughter in the close-knit, down-home, swigging- moonshine-on-the-porch and whistling-Dixie sense. This is still the old geezer who used to grope you up, right?'

  'Is this some new Valley phrase or are you in some continuing and pathetic attempt to sound British confusing grope and touch up?'

  'Answer the question.'

  'Look, we've been through all this. He's my Uncle Freddy who sometimes gives me an affectionate pat on the butt. End of story. He's a nice old guy and now it sounds like he's dying six thousand miles away from me and I've got to wait ten hours before I can even start heading to his bedside and I idiotically thought I'd call you for a little understanding maybe but instead —'