Authors: Iain Banks
‘I just worry we might chuck out stuff we shouldn’t. Burning’s kind of final.’
Ali nods slowly. ‘I suppose that might be the next time we all meet up, mightn’t it?’ she says.
‘When?’
‘At the crematorium. Once Guy’s gone. It’s only meant to be a few months now, isn’t it?’
‘That’s …’ I find I have to clear my throat to cover the time it takes to cope with this sudden change of direction. ‘That’s what we’re all expecting.’
‘I’m sorry. Should I not have said anything? You look upset.’
I don’t think I do; I don’t feel it, anyway. Maybe she expected me to be.
‘My bad,’ she says. ‘I’m not the world’s best at pussy-footing round this sort of thing. Too head-down confrontational, that’s me. So Rob tells me, anyway. Can’t help calling things like I see them. Cutting through all the euphemisms and excuses. It’s a failing. I suppose.’
‘He had talked about being buried in the garden,’ I tell her, ‘but then with the quarry going to eat into it over the next few years … Well, can’t do that. So, yes, the crematorium. Probably.’
‘Do you think you’ll miss him?’
I’ve thought about this. ‘Yes,’ I tell her. ‘Probably more than I expect to, as of now. Apparently that’s the way it tends to work.’ I’m aware this might sound kind of cold and emotionless, but I think it’s all you can say about something that you won’t really know the full truth of until it happens. Anyway, as an answer, this seems to satisfy her. More so than it might most people, perhaps.
‘Hmm.’ Ali nods. ‘Anyway,’ she says, patting the box of tapes. ‘Can’t really burn these. Too toxic, I guess.’
‘A lot of this old crap is,’ I tell her.
Rob has the task of looking in all the miscellaneous store cupboards dotted round the house. He’s one and a half down, so far, with lots to go.
‘Anybody near finished yet?’ he asks me, standing on the upper landing outside a walk-in. ‘There’s a lot of these to get through and they’re even more stuffed than they look.’ Wood, cardboard and plastic boxes of various types and sizes are scattered all over the floor around him.
‘Not really,’ I tell him. ‘Haze should be … he’s got the least to do, I think.’
‘Huh. Right; those can go. There’s stuff there from even before our time. You’re running all this past Guy, yeah?’
‘Yes. Think that’s more than one trip; I’ll be back.’
I take two boxes of ancient bills, business and official letters and bank statements down to Guy, let him look at them and have a good old grumble about security and how we should have bought a shredder and you can’t let this sort of stuff just go for recycling, just in case, and so am directed to dump everything onto the steadily growing structure of the bonfire.
‘I hadn’t realised Guy was such a hoarder,’ Rob says when I return. ‘Always thought he was the use-it-and-throw-it-away kind of guy; use-it-and-lose-it, just careless, with everything.’
‘I think it was his grandparents started it,’ I tell him. ‘His mum was fairly meticulous and liked to keep everything neatly sorted, and Guy sort of inherited the habit. He’d throw things away but then he’d feel bad and sort through them later, file them away, in case they ever came in handy or they were asked for by … officialdom. Even his dad used to keep lots of ancient stuff. Receipts, mostly, I think. He sort of collected those.’
‘Yeah, met his dad a couple of times,’ Rob says. ‘Cold, disapproving kind of guy. Stank of fags. You didn’t miss much.’
‘So I hear. Dad doesn’t seem to have thought very highly of him either.’
‘Well, at least they were still talking to each other.’ Rob grins. ‘My old man won’t talk to me at all. Hasn’t for twenty years.’
I just widen my eyes. I think it’s that kind of statement.
‘Wow,’ I say, when Rob just keeps on grinning and the silence goes on so long I feel I kind of have to make some sort of noise. I think I knew Rob didn’t get on with his parents, or his dad, at least, but this is an unexpected detail.
‘All I did was tell him I’d voted Tory in my first general election, in ninety-two,’ Rob tells me. ‘Dad was a Labour man, right? Union man, too; shop steward, down-the-line socialist. Staunch. Staunch as they come.’
‘Ah,’ I say, because it seems required. Rob’s family is from Newcastle or nearby, though you’d never tell from his accent.
‘Told him over tea at my nan’s in Gateshead, thinking I was doing the right thing, the brave thing, the manly thing, the reasonable thing, thinking I’d get a reasoned argument, instigate some sort of measured discourse.’ Rob shakes his head. ‘He just stopped eating, looked at his plate and thought for a moment, put down his knife and fork and went upstairs. Wouldn’t come down until I’d left, gone back to uni. We see each other at family funerals – four, so far – but even then he won’t say so much as hello. Lost count of the number of aunts and uncles who’ve tried to act as peacemakers. Won’t hear of it.’
I nod slowly.
‘Thing is,’ Rob says, ‘I always admired him for his ideals, for sticking up for what he believed in. Told him that. Always did tell him that. But times change. Patterns, ways of life, economic circumstances, ways of doing business and making things: they all change, and if you don’t move with the times, the times just roll over you and bury you. That’s all I was doing, voting for the team in the blue corner; moving with the times the way he’d moved with his. But he couldn’t see that. He’d have been the type who’d burn at the stake before they’d renounce their particular brand of faith, even for one right next door.’ Rob shrugs. ‘I told him, via my mum, I’d voted for Blair in the ninety-seven election, but that didn’t seem to make any difference.’ Rob laughs. ‘One strike and you’re out, with my dad. Must be great to have convictions, eh, Kit?’
‘That does seem … a bit, ah, harsh.’
‘That’s life. Families, at any rate. Anyway. Effluent under the bridge, I guess. But enough about me and my mad family. Back to business.’ He kicks one of the boxes. ‘There are statements and letters in here from banks and building societies I’ve never even heard of.’
‘I think we can safely assume those are all closed then.’
‘Hope your inheritance amounts to something more than all this crap and a heap of bills, young Kit.’
‘Me too.’
‘You going to be okay? Financially? When he goes?’
‘I’d like to think so.’
Rob frowns at me. ‘You don’t have to be diplomatic with me, Kit. I don’t have any illusions about your dad, or owe him anything. Other way round; Guy was nearly as bad as Haze at the casual tenner loan and then the seemingly innocent forgetting. That was one set of records never kept, never made in the first place. What is the situation; don’t you know?’
‘No, I don’t know,’ I tell him. ‘Dad won’t tell me.’
‘More boxes, Kit!’ Hol calls out from a bedroom doorway at the other end of the landing. ‘Hey, Rob. Progress?’
‘Slow,’ Rob says loudly. Hol shrugs and goes back into the room. Rob looks at me. ‘He won’t tell you?’
‘I’m not sure he knows himself. He says there are debts to be covered from the sale of the house. Some days he says things like, “Don’t you worry, kid, you’ll be rolling in it after you’ve got shot of me,” other days, mostly when he’s really low, he says I’ll be lucky to see a penny and how did it come to this and he’s sorry he’s been such a rubbish dad.’ I shrug. ‘Take your pick.’
‘You should ask Paul if there’s anything legal … any legal procedure you can follow to find out the true situation.’
‘Probably a bit late to start that now. I was expecting all that stuff to be settled, you know, afterwards.’
Rob sighs, squats by an opened box, takes out the half-dozen plastic folders it contains, briefly riffs through each and replaces them. ‘Yeah,’ he’s saying as he does all this. ‘See your point. Probably take years and you’d be overtaken by events. Well, one event.’ He glances up at me, returns his attention to the folders. ‘Just more money for the lawyers anyway. And the accountants, of course. Can’t forget the accountants. Mustn’t leave them out.’ He stands, kicks the flaps back over the box. ‘Clear. Ready to go.’
I take the boxes down for Dad’s inspection. My back is starting to hurt.
‘Help me move this, will you, love?’ Hol asks when I go back for the boxes she’s left on the landing. In the room, we shift the bed away from the wall, exposing more long cardboard boxes and some old rolled-up carpets wrapped in giant clear plastic bags.
‘How’s it going?’ Hol asks.
‘Good,’ I tell her. ‘We’re getting through lots of stuff. Haze and Paul are a bit slow.’
‘Paul’s damaged,’ Hol says, climbing over the bed to lie on it and open up one of the boxes. Her bum looks good in her tight jeans. ‘Haze … well, Haze is damaged too, but with Paul it’s mostly temporary.’ She pulls back the flaps of the box.
‘Also, I’ve checked with Pris and Ali about the whole them-being-my-mother thing? I don’t think they are either.’
‘
Carpet
tiles?’ Hol is saying, batting away some disturbed dust. She glances back at me. ‘Nobody did, hon. Including Guy.’
‘I know, but I thought I’d better ask, just to be sure.’
‘Well, hope that’s put your mind at rest.’
‘I suppose,’ I say, pulling out one of the wrapped carpets. ‘Hol?’
‘Kit,’ she says, pulling up wads of grey carpet tiles but then letting them fall back again. ‘There’s nothing else in here,’ she mutters. ‘These can go.’
‘You know that money?’
‘What money, hon?’ She closes the box flaps again.
‘That you’ve been looking after for me.’
‘Oh. Yeah.’
‘About how much are we talking about? Just roughly?’
‘Oh,’ Hol says, still lying on the bed, opening another box between it and the wall. ‘Not sure, offhand.’
‘Ah. I thought maybe you’d, like, brought a cheque. This weekend. Like we … you know …’
‘Well,’ Hol says, not looking back at me. ‘I sort of have. Well, I
have
,’ she says. She lifts out another carpet tile. This one is olive.
‘Oh.’
‘Couple of grand,’ she says quietly. She rummages in the box of carpet tiles.
‘Ah.’
I’m saying ‘Ah’ – and saying it the way that I said it – because I thought I’d built up significantly more than that; closer to five or six times that.
Hol throws the box flaps closed, twists on the bed. Her face might look a little flushed. She sits up on the bed, then jumps off it and goes to the door and closes it quietly, then stands in the window recess, folds her arms and leans against the windowsill, with a bright, milky sky behind her. ‘I don’t have all the money, Kit,’ she tells me, her gaze fixed on me. ‘Not all of it. Not right now.’ She pauses, swallows, and I think I’m supposed to say something but I don’t know what to say.
Suddenly my insides don’t feel so good. It’s like going over a sudden dip in the road when your dad’s driving and you’re just drifting off to sleep and suddenly the world just drops away beneath you. I sit on the bed.
‘You will get it,’ Hol is saying. ‘It’ll all be there, with interest, but I don’t have it right now. I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. But, look, you don’t need it right now, not
right
now, do you? I mean, I’ve got a cheque with me, for you, for two thousand. That’ll definitely clear. That won’t be a problem, but the rest … it’s another eleven or so, all told, I guess … you can wait just a bit for that, can’t you? Can you?’ She’s shaking her head. It’s hard to see because, framed by the window, she’s against the light, made a silhouette of, but she might be crying a little. ‘Or have I just …? Is this …? Christ, I feel like I’m just … I’m really fucking you over here, Kit, I’m so,
so
fucking sorry, but—’ She breaks off, stands up, turns away, puts her hands to her face.
‘Well,’ I say, after clearing my throat. ‘Two thousand’s … two thousand,’ I say, lamely. ‘We’re not destitute, and … there might, there should be money left after the house is sold and everything. Probably.’
‘I mean, it’s not like you … you do okay, you two, don’t you?’ Hol says, not looking at me. She’s looking out the window instead.
I’m back to not knowing what to say again for a bit, because I think I already covered this in what I just said.
‘What happened?’ I ask her, after a while.
She shakes her head really quickly. ‘Life happened, Kit. Tax codes happened, rent rises happened, friends letting me down happened, boyfriends with bad habits happened, hot new magazines and websites folding before they ever got round to paying their contributors fucking
happened
.’
Hol sounds angry, and I think maybe she sounds angry with me, which leaves me feeling a bit confused because I can’t see what I’ve done wrong. I sort of want to stand up and go over to her and put my arms round her and cuddle her and reassure her – not even anything sexual … though definitely that too, if I’m being honest – because she sounds hurt, and it would be good to try to take that away from her, try to make that better, because she’s Hol, after all.
And yet this isn’t fair, because I’m the one who’s been let down here. I realise Hol’s had problems and people have let her down, and I feel sorry for her for that, but it wasn’t me who let her down and now she’s letting me down.
We did an experiment in Physics class once with a van de Graaff generator where the whole class joined hands and one person got to touch the shiny globe at the top of the machine and the shock passed instantly to every one of us, making us all flinch, yelp, jump or scream, and I remember thinking,
Oh, thanks; so we all get to share the pain
. And this feels like that: like pain passed on, for no reason. At least, for no fair reason.
Hol turns round, sniffing and wiping a finger under each eye. She doesn’t look flushed any more. ‘You’ll get your money, Kit,’ she says, and her voice sounds slightly flat somehow. ‘I won’t let you down. I mean, I won’t … this won’t … this isn’t
it
, this isn’t permanent. I just … things, timings … kind of …’ She shakes her head again, settles back against the window. ‘This isn’t me,’ she says quietly, as though talking to herself, and shaking her head. ‘This isn’t what I’m like, I don’t do this, I don’t pull this kind of … I can’t believe I’m having to say this.’ She looks up at me. ‘You will get your money, Kit,’ she tells me.