Authors: Iain Banks
She tipped and lowered her head, holding one hand to an ear. She shook her head.
‘Shit,’ I said under my breath, and stepped out onto the stones. Well, what else was I going to do? She was beautiful, the guy she’d been with had left the hoo-ha without her, I was thirty-five and starting to watch my weight and check my hair for grey each morning, and I wasn’t so entangled elsewhere that I couldn’t handle the potential extra complication of getting tangled up with a woman who looked as good as she did. Providing she wasn’t simple, and unlikely as it probably was anyway. Rain sprinkled itself across my face and the wind uncombed my hair.
‘Ken Nott. Pleased to meet you.’ I held out my hand.
She looked at it for a moment, then took it in hers. ‘Celia. Merrial,’ she said. ‘How do you do.’
Her voice was soft, with a faint accent that was probably French.
‘You okay out here?’ I asked.
‘Yes. Is it all right?’
‘Sorry?’
‘For me to be here? Is it all right? It is permitted?’
With a sinking feeling, I realised that she hadn’t recognised me from earlier, down in the party. It sounded like she thought I was a security guard for Mouth Corp come to shoo her back to the properly appointed fun-having territory down below.
‘Haven’t the faintest idea,’ I admitted. ‘Civilian here myself.’ This wasn’t leading anywhere. Make excuses and leave. This was preposterously early to be baling out of a potential situation, but some sort of instinct I would usually ignore was telling me to forget it. ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘If you’re okay, I’ll just leave you to it. I just … you know, I saw you out here and …’ I wasn’t even handling my withdrawal gracefully.
She ignored this. Her head was canted to one side again, quizzical. She frowned and said, ‘Ah. I know your name.’
‘Do you now?’
‘You are on the radio,’ she said, brushing away a strand of hair sticking to her mouth. She had a small mouth and full lips. ‘Someone said you would be here.’ Her teeth were very white as she gave a little, tentative smile. ‘I listen to you.’
That was me hooked. As far as my ego was concerned she might as well have claimed to be my biggest fan. At the same time, a tiny crease of disappointment ruffled my contentment. Intelligent, rich, over-achieving and wildly influential though I naturally assumed all my listeners to be, there was something insufficiently exotic for a woman like this to be listening to my pop-raddled, commercial-choked show on daytime radio. Between the hours of ten and midday this woman ought to be perfecting her technique playing Bach fugues on her grand piano, or wandering the galleries clutching a draft of her thesis, standing in front of vast canvases, nodding wisely. She should be a Radio Three type, I told myself; certainly not listening to any radio station with an exclamation mark in its title.
I’m sorry, you fall beneath the acceptable standards of intriguingness that my over-heated and deeply wretched romantic sensibilities demand. Very Groucho altogether. Sad git.
‘I’m very flattered,’ I told her.
‘Are you? Why?’
I gave a small laugh. A gust of wind thudded into us, showering us with rain and making us sway together, as if dancing to the pummelling music of the storm. ‘Oh, I’m just always flattered when I meet somebody who admits to listening to my terminally facile and disposable show. And you—’
‘Is it really so?’ she said. ‘Do you really think it is facile and disposable?’
I had been going to say something on the lines of, And you are the most stunningly beautiful creature at this party largely composed of stunningly beautiful creatures, which makes your interest in me especially gratifying … but instead she was having the temerity to interrupt a professional talker, and taking my small talk seriously. Didn’t know which was worse.
‘Well, it can certainly be facile,’ I said. ‘And when it comes down to it, it is just local radio, even if it’s local radio for London. Noam Chomsky it ain’t.’
‘You admire Noam Chomsky,’ she said, nodding and stroking away another strand of hair from her mouth. The wind was howling round the building, scattering rain drops over the two of us. It was April, and not too cold, but there was still a fair amount of wind-chill factor happening here. ‘You have mentioned him a few times, I think.’
I held up my hands. ‘Closest thing to a hero I have.’ I folded my arms. ‘You really do listen to the show, don’t you?’
‘Sometimes. You say such things. I am always amazed that you get away with what you do. So often I think, They won’t let him get away with that, and yet, next time I switch on, there you are.’
‘We do call the studio the—’
‘Departure Lounge,’ she said, smiling. ‘I know.’ She nodded. The wind hit her in the back, making her take a step forwards, towards me. I put a hand out but she adjusted her stance, straightening again. She didn’t seem to notice the gale blowing round her. ‘You must make many enemies.’
‘The more the better,’ I agreed airily. ‘There are so many people deserving of utter contempt, don’t you think?’
‘You really don’t care?’
‘That I might make enemies of my elders and betters?’
‘Yes.’
‘Not enough to stop.’
‘You really don’t worry that somebody might take such offence at what you say they try to harm you?’
‘I refuse to worry,’ I told her. ‘I wouldn’t hand people like that even the partial victory of knowing I was concerned.’
‘So, then, are you brave?’ she asked with a small smile.
‘No, I’m not brave. I just don’t give a fuck.’
She seemed to find this amusing, lowering her head and smiling at the paving stones.
I sighed. ‘Life’s too short to spend it worrying, Celia.
Carpe diem
.’
‘Yes, life is short,’ she agreed, not looking at me. Then she did. ‘But you might risk making it shorter.’
I held her gaze. I said, ‘I don’t care,’ and, just then, there on the roof in the loud midst of the storm, I meant it.
She lifted her face up a little, as another gust shook her and me in sudden succession. I really wanted to take hold of that perfect little chin and kiss her.
‘Look,’ I said, ‘apart from anything else, like I say, it’s just radio. And it’s a reputation I have, that I’ve developed. Mostly by getting sacked from other radio stations, admittedly, but it’s what I’m known for. I kind of get a special discount because of that. People know I’m paid to be controversial, or just plain rude. I’m a shock jock. The Shock Jock, Jock the Shock, if you prefer your definitions in tabloid form. If Jimmy Young or one of the Radio One DJs or even Nicky Campbell said the things I do there’d be some sort of outcry, but because it’s me people just dismiss it. To really make an impression these days I’d have to say something actually slanderous, and that would get me fired. Though that’ll probably happen soon enough anyway.’
‘Still, it seems strange to approach what you do the way you do. Most people want to be liked. Or even loved.’ She presented this as though it was something that might not have occurred to my sorry, cynical ass before.
‘Oh, I’m always ready for my fair share of both,’ I told her.
‘But you insult people, and their ideas. Even their faiths. The things they love.’
‘People don’t have to listen.’ I sighed. ‘But, yes, I do insult things people hold dear. This is what I do.’ She was frowning. I put my hands to my cheeks. ‘Look, I don’t mean I insult people or their beliefs because I want to hurt those people, because I get some sort of sadistic kick out of it, I mean that what I find I need and want to say - and which is what I do, sincerely believe, which is what I think is the truth as exactly as I can tell it - is stuff that happens to hurt other people. Does that make sense?’
‘Yes, I think so,’ she said in a measured, sceptical tone.
‘What I’m trying to say is, I have my own beliefs. I … oh, shit, this is like so not post-ironic or post-modern and so insufficiently cynical for our knowing, you know … cynical … sorry, repetition of cynical … Jeez.’ I took a deep breath of the storm’s air. ‘I believe in truth,’ I told her. She was smiling a little now. I was making a complete idiot of myself but I didn’t care any more. ‘There; I said it. I believe there is something pretty damn close to objective truth more or less all the time and I’m not accepting this shite about everybody having their own truths or respecting somebody’s opinions just because they’re sincerely held. The Nazis sincerely hated the Jews; they weren’t just kidding. I’m not respecting their fucking ideas just because they were deeply held. I believe in science, in the scientific method, in doubt, in questioning, in facing truths, not hiding from them. I don’t believe in God but I admit I could be wrong. I don’t believe in faith at all because faith is belief without reason, and reason is the only thing we have, the only thing I do believe in. I think people have every right to believe in anything they want, no matter how ridiculous it might be, but I don’t accept their right to coerce others into the same views. And I certainly don’t accept any right they might think they have not to have their views challenged just because they’re going to feel peeved in the process.’
‘You have faith in reason,’ she said calmly, tucking some strands of hair back into place. ‘Don’t you?’
I laughed out loud, waving my arms about. ‘This is crazy!’ I yelled. ‘We’re standing here on top of a tower block in the middle of a fucking hurricane getting soaked to the skin and we’re talking about
philosophy
?’ I left my arms spread. ‘Does the essential absurdity of this situation not strike you, too? Celia?’ (I added, in case she thought I’d forgotten her name).
She put her head to one side again. Another staggering gust of wind, another adjustment of stance. ‘I’m sorry. Are you cold?’ she asked, sounding concerned. ‘We could go in.’
‘No, no,’ I told her. ‘I’m fine out here if you are. I’m a Scotsman; we’re legally and morally bound not to admit to feeling cold, certainly not in the presence of thinly clad females and especially not heart-stoppingly beautiful thinly clad females we might legitimately assume are used to balmier climes. The penalties are actually quite severe. They endorse your passport and—’
She was nodding, a tiny frown creasing her brows. ‘Yes. You only become inarticulate when you are being especially sincere, ’ she said, concluding.
That took the wind out of my sails. My hands dropped; I’d been talking with them as well. ‘What
are
you?’ I demanded. ‘Celia, come clean; are you some sort of flying squad critic-come-philosophical psychoanalyst?’
‘I am a married woman, a housewife, a listener.’
‘Married?’
‘Married.’
‘Do you give your husband this hard a time?’
‘I would not dare.’ She looked quite serious. Then she shook her head. ‘Well, I might, but he would not understand.’
Fuck this; I was getting cold. This was the most interesting, even unusual woman I’d met in a long, long time, but there comes a point.
I held her gaze and, after a breath, said, ‘And are you a faithful wife, Celia?’
She didn’t say anything for a while. We just stood there looking at each other. I could see little drops of rain on her face like sweat or tears and her hair was coming undone in the tearing wind. She shook in those gusts, as though shivering.
‘I have been,’ she said eventually.
‘Well, I—’
She stopped me, holding up one hand towards my mouth, shaking her head. She glanced behind me, to the still open window.
‘My husband is …’ she began, then stopped. She tutted, looked down and to one side, and pinched her lower lip briefly with the fingers of her right hand. She looked up at me. ‘Once,’ she said, ‘I thought that if I really, really hated somebody, I would make love to them, and have my husband find out. But only if I really hated the person, and wanted them dead, or perhaps thought that they wished they were dead.’
I let my eyebrows rise. ‘Holy shit,’ I said, reasonably. She did not look like she was joking. ‘He is, ah, of the jealous persuasion, then.’
‘You do not know his name.’
‘Ah,’ I said, embarrassed. I tapped my temple. ‘Was it Merry—?’
‘Merrial,’ she said. ‘He is John Merrial.’
I shook my head. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Not ringing any bells.’
‘It should, perhaps, I think.’
‘Well, you have the advantage over me,’ I said.
She nodded slowly, solemnly. She said, ‘I would like to see you again, if you would like.’ Her voice was nearly drowned by the wind.
‘Yes, I’d like,’ I said. I was thinking,
I haven’t touched her, kissed her, anything, yet. Nothing
.
‘However you must know that if I were to see you,’ she said, ‘it would have to be seldom, and secretly. It might seem, sound … casual,’ she said, frowning again, as though she wasn’t putting this just as she would like. ‘But it would not be. It could not be. It would be …’ she shook her head ‘… of significance. Not something to be entered into lightly.’ She smiled. ‘I make it sound all very formal, do I not?’
‘I’ve suffered more romantic propositions.’
I moved slowly forwards and reached for her. She came up on her toes, raising her head and tipping it, bringing her hands to either side of my face and opening her mouth to mine, while the wind tugged and pushed and jostled us and the rain sowed the gusts like a soft, cold shrapnel of the storm.
Jo had been at a big Ice House bash that night. She rolled in drunk half an hour after me, staggering down the steps into the
Temple Belle
, grinning and smelling of smoke. She laughed and started tickling me, then kissing me, then we fell into bed.
She had a way she preferred to be fucked sometimes when she was drunk like this; on her back, naked but for her T-shirt lifted up over her head and caught round her neck with her arms folded up inside it, making a sort of square around her head, her face hidden in the black cotton as she yelled and whooped, a horny, swearing wild-child in the carnal negative of a burka.
‘
John
Merrial?
Mr
Merrial?’ Ed said. ‘He’s a gangsta, mate.’
‘He’s
what
?’
‘He’s a fuckin gangsta, I’m telling you. Crime boss. Whatever you want to call it. Yeah; boss is better. Mind you, I’m saying that, but could be he’s not much involved in actual villainy these days. Gone legit, inne? Like in
The Godfather Part Two
, when they talk about in a while they’ll be totally legit by the end of the year or whatever it is, you know? That sorta fing. Course, on the
uvver
uvver hand, there’s better profits in stuff like drugs and refugees an cars an computah crime an stuff.’