Authors: Iain Banks
I put my arm round her shoulders, squeeze in a chummy sort of way, then let go.
I think she relaxes a bit. ‘You’re sweet,’ she says quietly. ‘I never thought I’d let anyone down like this. Least of all you.’
‘Seriously. It’s okay,’ I tell her. ‘I trust you.’
‘More than I deserve,’ she mutters. She breaks eye contact, finishes her glass, turns round and leans her bum against the sink front. ‘Any more bubbly?’
I take her glass. By the stem. ‘Allow me, ma’am.’
‘I meant every fucking word,’ Guy is telling Pris and Hol. ‘I think you’re all fucking berserk;
we’re
all fucking berserk, except I’m not going to be around much longer to take responsibility for the fucking mess we’re in, so I’m fucking absolving myself. I used to think we were a bit lame, our generation, a bit wimpish and conformist compared to students from ten years before us, but we were the fucking Angry Brigade compared to the little twats running around the campus these days. They occupied the Old Quad for a week with a dozen tents and sat completing their latest essay on their tablets to make sure they’d be in on time and then seemed genuinely fucking surprised the bankers didn’t all hand their bonuses back and reform the entire international banking system just on the strength of that. They should be manning the fucking barricades, stashing petrol bombs and standing shoulder to fucking shoulder with the workers, such as are left; there should have been a general fucking strike when the banks weren’t all straight-out nationalised.’
We’re in the sitting room. More drink has been taken. We’re on the fourth or fifth bottle of champagne, and most people have some sort of chaser too.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Guy!’ Rob yells suddenly. We all look at him. Even Ali. ‘You just don’t get it, do you?’
‘Get fucking what?’ Guy says.
‘That the world’s fucking changed, Guy. Again? You know? Like it always does?’
‘Babe,’ Ali says, reaching to touch Rob’s arm, but he pulls it away, keeps his gaze fixed on Guy, who is glaring back at him.
‘And like it always will? And just because you don’t like it, that doesn’t matter a fuck. Jesus Christ, Guy, none of us are glad you haven’t got long to go, but it’s like that’s just an acknowledgement of how cut off from everything you and people like you are – have been – for years, decades.’
‘Babe,’ Ali says again.
‘Yeah, the world isn’t fucking perfect, Guy,’ Rob says, ‘but it never fucking was and it never fucking will be, not with us in charge. The fact you don’t like the way things have been going since before … before even you were able to vote, is just too bad. Dying … being on the brink of death doesn’t give you any right to just sit there—’
‘Babe,’ Ali says a third time, reaching out to Rob again. He shrugs her off, spilling some of his champagne onto the carpet. At least it’s not going to leave much of a stain.
‘Leave me alone, will you?’ Rob says to Ali. ‘We’ve been creeping around, pussy-footing around this all weekend – in fact, no; all of the last two fucking
decades
. Guy, Guy, Guy, seriously,’ Rob says, wiping his mouth and sitting forward, putting his glass down and holding his hands out like claws towards Guy, who is looking, I think, vaguely amused. ‘We don’t want you to die, but you’re going to go … still bitter, still fuming against stuff there’s no, no reason to fume against.’
‘What?’ Guy breaks in. ‘I cannot rail against the injustices of humanity in my own fucking house because I might curdle my karma or something? What fresh bollockry is this?’
‘The world has
changed
!’ Rob shouts. Ali looks like she’s going to reach out to him again, but then makes her mouth go tight, folding her lips inwards so that they sort of disappear inside her mouth. She sits back, arms folded, gaze fixed on the table. ‘It’ll change again and the people who grew up while it’s … while it’s like the way it is now will be upset at
that
and wish it would return to the way things were when
they
were young, but it won’t ever go back, not to their time, now, or to yours, twenty years back or more, not to anybody’s time.’
‘So I should stop whining about it?’ Guy says, with an expression somewhere between a grin and a sneer.
‘Yeah,’ Paul says, with a sort of half-hearted laugh. ‘Stop bellyaching about it.’
‘But I like whining,’ Guy tells him. ‘I enjoy bellyaching about shit happening and it’s one of the very few pleasures I have left, harping on about how stupid people are and how fucked-up the world is.’ Guy looks from Rob round at the rest of us, then back to Rob. ‘Fucking entirely take your point, Robert. But do not attempt to deprive me of one of my last … last … retained enjoyments. Shit!’ He looks at me. ‘What was I …?’
‘Last remaining?’ I say.
Guy snaps his fingers. ‘Fucking “remaining”; trust me to go for the marginally more obscure term.’ He shakes his head.
‘So we should just roll over and let ourselves be double-fucked by the bankers and the governments that govern in their interests but our name?’ Hol asks Rob.
‘Oh, fuck,’ Rob says, laughing. ‘Here we go. It’s the last Marxist in the shop. What, Hol?’
‘Don’t have the discipline to be a proper Marxist,’ Hol tells him. ‘But it’s not really about politics, just fairness; justice. Being decent to your fellow human beings.’
‘Well, there are lots of ways of trying to be fair,’ Rob tells her. ‘And the one we’ve settled on is obviously capitalism and the market; we’ve sort of tried everything else and they didn’t work, and even if those other possibilities were strangled at birth by big bad capitalism, it’s no good trying to resurrect them. We have to work with what we’ve got.’
‘What, to each according to his greed?’ Hol says.
‘We’re
all
greedy,’ Rob says loudly. ‘Some of us are greedy for different things, not always money, but we’re all greedy. You’re greedy. I’m greedy, we all are. The system we have to work with just acknowledges that, that’s all.’ He sways slightly, even though he’s still sitting down, as he picks up his glass and drinks. ‘You should try working with it sometime, Hol. Try going with the flow. You’ll get further.’
‘Not in any direction I fucking want to go,’ Hol says.
‘Well, tough,’ Rob tells her. ‘Cos you’re being borne along in that direction all the time anyway whether you like it or not.’
‘Yeah, we should all swim faster towards the next precipice, the next great fall,’ Hol says. She drinks too. ‘Woo-hoo.’
‘Have we all quite finished?’ Pris says. ‘You guys …’ She shakes her head, ventures a smile.
‘Yeah, come on, guys,’ Haze says, rolling another modest joint (supplies are low).
But Rob is looking at Pris with his lip curled and saying, ‘Oh, stop being the fucking school matron, won’t you? You think you’re holding us together or something? Balm for our jaggedness or what the fuck? Who appointed you—’
‘Right,’ Ali says, sitting forward. ‘Babe, Rob, come on—’
Rob ignores her, still glaring at Pris, who wears a frown. ‘You’re so fucking jolly-hockey-sticks for a council-house girl made good,’ Rob tells her. ‘With your latest dumb-ass bloke in tow and this pathetic desperation that we all think he’s “okay” and not too much
not
like “one of us”.’
‘Christ, Rob,’ Ali says, like she’s going to cry now, and sits wringing her hands.
‘Like that fucking matters,’ Rob says. ‘Like we represent anything worthwhile, like we’re anything else apart from a bunch of people who came together for a few years because we were in the same uni and the same department and then went our separate ways to our own pathetic individual disappointments, and became the sort of people we’d have run a mile from when we were the age we were when we first lived here. Well, your guy
isn’t
okay, Pris; none of us think so. But none of us is going to risk hurting your fragile fucking feelings by saying so, not even Mr I-Speak-the-Truth Guy here.’ Rob wipes his mouth again. Pris seems to shrink in on herself. ‘Pris,’ Rob says, leaning towards her, ‘your new guy is …’ Rob looks at Hol. ‘What’s the—’ He snaps his fingers, looks back to Pris. ‘Lumpen; yeah, that’s what he is, he’s lumpen.’
‘Okay, you need to stop now,’ Ali says quickly, clutching at Rob’s elbow.
He shrugs her off. ‘Oh, don’t give me the fucking wounded puppy eyes,’ Rob tells Pris, his face contorting. ‘This is the fucking point: if you love him or just like him or he’s a good fuck or something or good with your kid, fine; why the fuck not? Sincerely hope you’re happy. Sincerely. But don’t look to us for some sort of fucking endorsement. You don’t need it. We’re a bunch of fuck-ups; not one of us is doing what we really ever wanted to do. Not one.’
‘Speak for yourself,’ Hol says.
‘Why the hell should we have to stick with what we wanted to do when we were basically just kids anyway?’ Paul says.
‘What?’ Rob is saying to Hol. ‘You
wanted
to be a penniless film critic? So shit at managing her own finances you have to ask your friends for loans? Really? Seriously?’
‘Fuck you,’ Hol says, staring at him, voice flat.
‘
What?
’ Ali says. Haze looks startled.
Rob grins at Hol, waves one hand at her regally. ‘Ah, repay me any time, but get off my fucking case about what a corporate sell-out I am, or whatever this week’s line is. Helping to keep
you
afloat, honey.’
‘Repay
you
?’ Ali is saying. Her face looks pale. ‘It’s all in joint … do you have a fucking separate
bank
account? Where—’ But Rob is still looking at Hol. He is smiling. She is not. ‘God fucking dammit,’ Ali says. ‘Look at me when I’m—’
She wraps her fingers round his elbow again and Rob tries to shrug her off once more but she keeps her grip, and then Rob sort of half turns to her and jabs his elbow – his whole arm – back so hard he hits her in the bottom of her ribs and you can hear the thud and the wheeze of breath being knocked out of her and her involuntary gasp and yelp of pain.
‘Christ!’ Paul says, getting up, going towards Rob or maybe Ali. Haze is just sitting looking stunned, Pris’s mouth is hanging open. Even Guy looks surprised.
‘You fucking—!’ Hol is bouncing out of the couch and coming at Rob, planting one foot on the table between them and looking like she’s going to leap across it.
Ali is sliding off the couch to her knees, wrapped around herself, doubling up on the floor, kneeling, head down, blonde hair hanging.
Rob leaps to his feet, in front of Hol. ‘Yeah, Hol?’
Hol is half on and half off the table. She swings her balled right fist at him but he just pulls his head back and she misses, unbalancing herself. She staggers back and to the side, one foot scattering glasses on the table. She starts to fall; the wrong way for me to save her. I’m getting up from the pouffe as fast as I can. Haze is holding the book he’s rolling the joint on up and out of the way.
Hol flies to one side, falling between the table and the end of the couch, but sort of catching her left knee on the corner of the table and the back of her head on the arm of the couch; Guy has stuck a foot out under her, to try to help cushion her head before it hits the floor.
‘Fucking
enough
, Rob!’ Paul yells, getting to Rob from one side and trying to put his arms round him. Rob is watching Hol as she falls in a ragged, disorganised heap; the sound of her hitting the floor is loud, and I feel the floor bounce. Rob wriggles in Paul’s embrace, not wanting to be held.
Ali is still on her knees, also between the table and the couch, on the other side. Pris has got to her, kneeling with one hand on Ali’s back.
Rob relaxes and lets himself be held by Paul. He turns to him and says, ‘This is nice; finally coming out, are we?’
‘Oh just leave it, Rob, for the love of fuck,’ Paul says, sounding weary.
‘Give us a kiss.’
‘Fuck off.’
I’ve gone round the back of the couch to help Hol. Guy is leaning forward, grunting with the effort, one hand on Hol’s shoulder. Hol is stirring, one hand gripping the edge of the table, trying to get up. I get to her and start trying to help.
‘So, how are we now?’ Rob says jovially, looking round at us all as best he can while still trapped in Paul’s arms. ‘Better, worse, or just the same?’
We’re in the kitchen again. Hol is sitting at the table, an improvised ice pack held at the back of her head, a pack of sacrificial frozen peas on her injured knee. I am washing up and drying, and Guy, walking with just his stick, is putting away, one-handed. He hobbles across the kitchen every so often, carrying one plate or glass at a time. Paul is sitting beside Hol, his head on the table again, like he was this morning.
Rob seemed happy enough to go to his and Ali’s room, though there was some crashing and banging up there afterwards and it did sound like he was wrecking the place. ‘We should set him loose on the rest of the house,’ Guy said. ‘Save the quarry people some money tearing it down.’
Ali thinks she might have a cracked rib. She rang a taxi to take her to A&E. Pris went with her.
Haze went to sleep slumped on a seat in the sitting room. He had to be woken to be sent to his bed.
Guy is whistling. He stops long enough to say, ‘Well, we should do this more often, don’t you think?’
‘Yeah,’ Hol says. ‘Every weekend.’
‘I’m free next one,’ Paul says, then; ‘Oh, no; no I’m not.’ He doesn’t take his head off the table as he’s saying any of this. ‘But yeah. Actually … I may just move back in. Commute.’
‘You really that hard-up, pet?’ Guy says to Hol, as he passes, carrying a saucer.
‘Hard-up enough to have to ask Rob for a loan,’ Hol says dully. ‘Draw your own.’
‘You should have asked me,’ Paul says.
‘That’s very … gallant of you,’ Hol tells him. ‘Trying to protect what little is left of my reputation in front of these two. But let’s stick with the truth, eh?’
‘Ah,’ Paul says from the table. ‘Okay.’
Hol catches me looking at her. ‘Paul already loaned me money.’
‘I see,’ I say. I go back to drying.
And so this last evening seems set to dribble away into nothing, while we go to our respective beds.