Authors: Iain Banks
‘Ah!’ I say, breathing hard, still shaken. I stagger to my feet, plough forward through the soft ground, trying to untie the knot over my chest. ‘Yeah! Fine!’ I tell him, stumbling back to the relative safety of the base of the wall.
‘Looks like there’s been an avalanche or something, doesn’t it?’ Haze says from above as I lean back, exhausted, against the stonework, shaking, breathing hard and picking ineffectually at the now very tight, hard knot over my chest.
‘Uh-huh,’ I say.
‘You do a lot of climbing, then?’
‘No,’ I say, half shouting. ‘Not really.’
‘They let you go climbing in the quarry, do they?’
‘Well, you know,’ I say, still trying to get my breath back. ‘It being a Sunday. Nobody about. Not much activity, these days anyway.’
‘Ah. Right. Anyway, it’s all exercise, isn’t it?’
‘Yup.’
‘Yeah …’ I can hear him pulling on the cigarette, then it goes arcing over my head, falling into the quarry. ‘I’ve got the kettle on,’ he tells me. ‘Going to jump back down now. Oh; you need a hand getting back over or anything?’
‘No. No, I’m fine.’
‘Splendido. I’ll get a brew going. Milk and two sugars, isn’t it?’
‘Yeah.’ The knot is just starting to loosen. ‘Milk and two. Please.’
No point keeping a low profile now; I climb over the wall where I’m standing – it’s not easy, I’m trembling so much, muscles aching – and tramp back to the garage to dump the rope and binoculars, then leave my boots at the back door and brush off what mud I can from my clothes before entering the porch.
‘What the fuck have you been doing?’ Guy asks, sat at the head of the kitchen table in the old army greatcoat he uses as a dressing gown. Ali is sitting across the angle from him, looking submerged in her fluffy white robe. She just stares at me. There are big circles under her eyes.
‘I fell,’ I tell Guy, and head for the hall.
‘Tea’s on the table!’ Haze calls from the sink as I leave. He’s wearing a different T-shirt. Carter, it says, in dramatic black and white.
‘Back in a min,’ I tell him as I go for yet another shower.
But there’s a queue, because everybody seems to be getting up at the same time. Paul’s standing outside the bathroom with a towel over his arm.
‘Hey, Kit,’ he says, voice croaky. His hair’s dishevelled.
I shower in Guy’s en suite instead. He doesn’t like me doing this, but too bad. I even leave some grit in one corner of the shower tray, rather than rinse it carefully away as I normally would, just to make it clear I’ve been here.
‘Yeah, that’ll show him, Kit,’ I tell myself.
But then, as I’m towelling down outside the shower, I start to feel foolish and petty, so I reach into the shower and hose away the little V of grey dirt after all, until it’s all spotless again.
‘Much better,’ I mutter.
‘You fuckers! You might have fucking woken me up! Kit! Why didn’t you get me back up?’
‘You were sound asleep,’ I tell him.
‘You could have woken me!’
‘You’d already taken your sleeping pills; you’d have been too groggy to move.’
‘Well, let’s think what plant-based chemical substance is world-renowned for making people feel wide fucking awake, almost instantly, shall we? Oh, wait a fucking minute. I know!’
‘Dad, the last time you took coke you nearly had a heart attack,’ I remind him.
‘My heart, Kit. My fucking heart, not yours. My heart, my life, my choice.’
He’s wearing his ancient, faded red
North 99
baseball cap today instead of the woolly hat that looks like a tea cosy. Maybe because there’s a hint of sun in the sky. He puts one hand up to the brim and for a moment it looks like he’s actually going to tear the cap off and throw it onto the table in disgust, but he doesn’t.
‘Stop biting the kid’s ear,’ Hol tells him. ‘We just didn’t want to risk you dying on us. At least Kit was thinking of your best interests; the rest of us were just scared about explaining ourselves to the cops when they turned up in A&E while the medics were drawing the bloods that would prove you’d OD’d on the devil’s dandruff.’ She smiles at Guy. ‘You need to elevate your guns a bit, love. Pick on those of us not quite at point-blank range.’
‘
That
was a movie,’ Haze says, nodding.
‘Talking about heart attacks,’ Ali says quietly to Rob. I think maybe she taps his leg with hers, under the table.
‘What?’ Pris says to Haze.
Rob drinks from his coffee mug, looks up from his iPad at Ali. ‘Now what?’
‘
Point Blank
.’
‘How many cups have you had?’ Ali says.
‘That with John Cusack?’ Paul asks, sounding sleepy.
Rob redirects his gaze from Ali to Paul. ‘That was
Grosse Pointe Blank
,’ he tells him, going back to his iPad. ‘This was late sixties; John Boorman, Lee Marvin.’
‘I make it three,’ Ali says to Rob, who doesn’t look up. ‘You just don’t usually drink this much. You know what it can do to your heart.’
‘Never saw it,’ Pris says.
Rob frowns at something on the iPad.
‘Thank fuck,’ Guy is saying to Hol, ‘I have friends prepared to go to such lengths to protect me in my final months and make sure I don’t over-enjoy myself, or peg out before my properly constituted … allotment of pain, misery and humiliation.’
Ali releases a long sigh.
‘You’re welcome,’ Hol mutters, munching her toast and reading her magazine.
‘So. You two were up late,’ Ali says quietly. Nobody seems sure who she’s talking about at first, though she’s looking at Hol as she says this. Then she looks at me. Uh-oh.
‘Hmm?’ Hol is saying.
‘Just, I saw you sidling quietly out of Kit’s room, late on; very late on, last night. When I was going for a pee.’
Hol snorts, going back to her magazine. ‘Yeah. We’re secret lovers.’ She nods sideways at Guy. ‘I’m collecting the set.’ She pauses, looks up at Guy. ‘Your dad; he’s not still alive, is he?’
‘No, but we could dig him the fuck up,’ Guy says. ‘Would that be acceptable?’
‘I was watching Kit play his game,’ Hol tells Ali, with a small smile on her lips. ‘Being a big bulgy hero and taking up arms against a sea of scary monsters. It was surprisingly interesting.’ She nods, frowns. ‘Almost worryingly interesting.’ She gazes at a point just above Ali’s head, fingers drumming on the table. ‘I may be even more of a geek than I was already worried about.’ She shrugs, goes back to her magazine.
‘Okay,’ Ali says, though she somehow sounds like she’s only pretending to accept this. She turns her face to me. ‘Kit, are you blushing?’
‘I don’t think so,’ I tell her, suddenly angry at her. ‘Am I?’ I ask Paul, who is sitting looking sorry for himself and cradling a large mug of tea. The round of toast on the plate in front of him is untouched.
‘Hmm?’ Paul says. I don’t think he’s been listening.
Hol is looking at me, elbow on table, chin on hand. ‘Dunno. Are you blushing, Kit? Have you reason to? Should I be flattered? Vaguely disturbed?’
‘Well,
now
I’m blushing,’ I tell them, grinning.
‘Hmm,’ Ali says, but just drinks her tea.
‘You got a girlfriend yet, Kit?’ Haze asks.
‘No,’ I tell him.
‘Who’d fucking have him?’ Guy says, glaring at me.
‘Guy!’ Pris says. She looks at me. ‘He’s just jealous, Kit,’ she tells me. ‘You’re cuter than he is; way cuter.’
‘Yeah, maybe now, just,’ Guy mutters.
‘Thank you very much, ma’am,’ I say quietly, head down.
‘The trick,’ Haze says, ‘is just to get out there and not be afraid to get the occasional knock-back.’
Hol looks at Haze. ‘“Occasional”?’ she says.
‘I agree with m’learned friend,’ Paul says quietly, pushing his plate of toast to one side and gently lowering his head to lay it on the table. ‘Put yourself about a bit, Kit,’ he tells me.
‘Do you not want that toast, then?’ Haze is saying.
‘…
We
sure as hell did,’ Rob mutters.
For a moment there’s silence in the kitchen, and nobody meets anybody else’s gaze.
For a few moments, actually.
I think it’s a sex tape.
‘Right,’ Ali says, ‘if we’re going to do this properly we need a programme.’
‘Jeez, here we go,’ Rob says, rubbing a hand over his shiny scalp.
Ali looks at him. ‘We only have so much time, and so many able-bodied searchers.’
‘Oh, ta,’ Guy mutters.
‘Don’t sweat it, Guy,’ Paul says quietly, his head still lying on the table. ‘She may have been referring to me.’ He sighs loudly. ‘Don’t feel very able-bodied right now.’
‘Yeah,’ Hol says. ‘We may not all be at our best here.’
‘I’ll draw up a doc,’ Ali says, reaching for her iPad. ‘Assign us roles and areas of study.’
‘You’re missing work, aren’t you?’ Rob says.
Paul groans.
‘Let me do that,’ I say, reaching to grab the A4 pad from its drawer. I pull the pencil out of the ring-binder bit at the top, flip over to a clean sheet and quickly draw eight lines down the page.
‘Kit,’ Ali says, raising the iPad one-handed. ‘I’ve got it covered.’
‘This is quicker,’ I tell her, starting to scribble letter groups along the top of the page: Dad, Me, Hol … ‘Race you!’ I tell her, glancing up. Pri, Ali, Haz, Rob, Pol. Down the side of the page I start listing the various bits of the house, beginning with ‘At’ for Attic.
Ali places the iPad on the table. ‘Well,’ she says, ‘if it keeps you happy.’ She nods at the pad in front of me. ‘You’ve got all of us, yes?’ She leaves a space for me to confirm that I do, but I just keep on writing. ‘Then,’ she says, ‘you need all the places we can look, then some free space for other categories, like somebody who can liaise between all the rest, or … make the tea or something.’
‘Got it,’ I tell her.
‘Or we could do it like ants,’ Haze suggests.
We all look at him. ‘
What?
’ Guy says. I suppose somebody had to.
‘Yeah,’ Haze says. ‘Only, I saw this documentary, see? The ants don’t have, like, a plan between them, not like a proper, thought-out, like … plan, but the way they just sort of all mill about, right, it looks … it looks, like, totally random? And it sort of is, at first, but then they end up communicating with … like, chemicals, and these trails let them explore everywhere but then, like, concentrate on the bits where they need to, yeah? See?’
‘Not really,’ Pris says.
Ali looks back at me as I get to near the bottom of the page, writing OH (for Outhouse/s) 1, 2, 3 and Gar. There’s about an eighth of the page left for Any Other Business.
‘And maybe,’ Ali says, ‘another column for promising areas too big for one person to cover in the time that would benefit from further research and additional resources being brought to bear.’
‘Got you,’ I say, drawing another line down near the right margin.
‘But that’s what I was saying …’ Haze says in a small voice.
‘Might I make a suggestion?’ Guy says. ‘Given that this is my fucking house and home?’
‘What?’ Ali says.
I look at Dad, pencil poised.
He looks at me. ‘Let’s have a big fucking bonfire. Clear all the shit.’
Hol glances at the door of the bedroom. ‘You did okay, by the way,’ she tells me quietly. I raise my eyebrows. ‘Over breakfast,’ she says. ‘Good deflecting. Saying, “
Now
I’m blushing.” That worked.’
I might be starting to blush again now. ‘I’m getting better at this stuff,’ I agree. ‘That box ready?’
‘Ready to go. Take it away, young Kit.’
My principal role is liaison and logistics; this is what I’ve been tasked with. Mostly this means carrying boxes. I take the box down the stairs to where Guy sits in his wheelchair by the open back door in the kitchen porch. I plonk the relatively shallow cardboard box – it originally contained bananas – down on an upturned plastic crate I brought from my room to sit in front of Guy. He leans over, peers into the box. ‘Books,’ he says. ‘Charity shop.’
‘Righto,’ I say, lifting the box.
‘This you?’ he says, nodding at some of the mud and soil I left behind earlier, lying just outside the door.
‘Told you; I fell.’ I head for the garage to add this box to the couple already in the car.
‘Yeah,’ Haze says, pulling out a crumbling cardboard container from beneath a pile of old curtains. We’re in what Guy and I have always called the old outhouse, because it’s even more dilapidated than the others, but which for the purposes of our organised search we’re calling Outhouse Two. ‘I was sort of given … well, I was thinking, you know, that maybe Guy was getting us here to, you know, pass on some of his worldly goods or whatever. You know, rather than wait. Rather than involve the lawyers more than they need to be, know what I mean? Maybe tell us what he was handing on, to, like, you know, acknowledge what we’d all meant to each other. Or something. I don’t know.’
‘Yeah, well,’ I say.
I peel back the flaps on top of the box. Inside, there is a lot of wood and fabric stuff, like bread bins, chopping boards and light shades.
‘Do you think Guy’s got any surprises lined up, or anything?’ Haze asks me.
I think about this. ‘No,’ I tell him.
‘Look at these! We can’t throw these out!’
‘It’s not really throwing out,’ I tell Pris. ‘We’re just going to recycle some.’
Pris is in Guy’s room, with full permission to get rid of any clothes she deems fit for disposal. She has a laundry basket for things to be recycled and a big cardboard box for things to be burned. She’s holding up some old stuff; things I think must be from the time of Guy’s parents. A white silk scarf, fronded, a slinky dress of silver, frayed, an old pair of yellow cords, so thick they look ploughed, an electric-blue dressing gown with vivid, colourful Chinese decorations, delicately pitted by tiny burn holes down the front.
‘Do
you
want to take anything?’ I ask Pris. ‘For you?’
‘Hmm, I don’t know. I’d mostly only be taking them for other people. Friends.’
‘Shall I get another box?’
‘Do you think these would fit Rick?’ she asks, holding up the pair of yellow cords.
They look big and baggy and old-fashioned. ‘Yes,’ I tell her, sticking strictly to remit.