Authors: Iain Banks
‘But then I chickened out,’ he tells us. ‘I mean, I’d worked out how I could have levered myself over the railings using my stick and everything … but then I started thinking that maybe it doesn’t look high enough to kill me outright, and that would be a bit shit, and then what about the poor fucker I throw myself in front of, even if I wait till there’s a gap in the traffic? Then I thought I could wait for a Range Rover or a big Merc or a Beemer or an Audi – something flash, with a personal twat plate – try to fucking
aim
for that, on the plausible grounds that whoever was driving it would be a rich fucker and like as not deserved a bit of compensatory trauma in their pampered fucking life.’ He shakes his head. ‘Then I thought,
But what if they’ve got kids in the car?
Even if they are spoiled, over-indulged brats, do I have the right to …? So I gave in to fucking …
compassion
in the end. Me! Things have come to a pretty pass, I tell you.’ He hangs his head, shakes it. He pulls in a deep, wheezing breath, and looks up again, blinking.
‘And then I realised I was just looking for excuses for myself, and I wasn’t going to do it anyway. So I gave up and sat meself down here to have a smoke and think about it.’ He smiles at both of us and says, ‘And so, my friends, I have smoked, and I have indeed thought about it. And …’
He doesn’t say any more. He just looks away, towards the downward brow of the hill where the floor of the cutting and the motorway fall away and where all the white lights blink into existence and all the red lights suddenly disappear.
There’s a silence then, filled from beneath with the rise and fall of the noise of the traffic, and I smell the diesel fumes, laid out across the cold, early-morning breeze, and I wait for Guy to say more, or for Hol to say something else, but neither of them does say anything, so eventually I ask, ‘Do you want to go back home now, Dad?’
8
‘D
oesn’t look much bigger, really, does it?’ Hol asks.
It’s summer and the sun is coming and going behind lots of little puffy white clouds, painting the ground and half the curved wall of the quarry with sliding patterns of shade. We’re standing on the loop of the driveway, just in front of where the house used to be. We’re looking through a chain-link fence into the quarry. Big yellow trucks, made toys of by the distance, trundle about the place.
‘I did think it would look … bigger,’ I agree. ‘Fast work, though. Didn’t think the house would be gone this quickly.’
Guy died two months ago, in the Bewford hospice. He was only there for the last week; I managed him at home until then.
The day Dad died, I stayed in the spare room at Mrs Willoughby’s, which was kind of her. I was alone in the house the second night, and felt almost nothing at first, but then woke up in the middle of the night with an already sopping pillow, crying. I sobbed quietly for some time, curled up round a pain in my belly I worried for a while might be the start of my own illness, my own cancer, somehow inherited despite everything, but it was gone by the morning and has never reappeared.
The Power of Attorney action was dropped by the council a week later, coincidentally on the same day I got the notice informing me the house had to be vacated in ten days, after the final appeal against the quarry company’s land purchase was turned down.
Not everybody was there for the funeral. Ali was in Indonesia and couldn’t make it; Rob felt embarrassed by his behaviour on that last weekend we were all together, and declined. I got to speak to him on the phone, at his office in London, after a few days of persistence, but he still couldn’t be persuaded.
The evening of the funeral – the wake was back here, and fairly subdued – I ended up sitting on a couch between Hol and Pris, crying a little and being hugged from both sides and falling asleep between them. They saw me to my room together. I fell asleep on top of the bed with all my clothes and one shoe still on. I had a dream that I woke up to find somebody standing over me in the darkness, holding a tape-measure, but it wasn’t anybody I recognised, and my imagination may have added the detail of the tape-measure afterwards.
The estate isn’t settled yet but the lawyer says there ought to be some money coming to me after Guy’s many debts are settled; maybe twenty-five to thirty thousand, which is not exactly life-changing – my life has changed quite enough already, frankly – but also not to be sniffed at.
Hol’s cheque for two thousand did clear. She was borrowing from Paul and Rob to pay me back.
The only part of my inheritance I’ve received so far is a name and address:
Mrs Elisabeth McKelvie
28B Tonbridge Avenue
Maroombah
NSW 1124
Australia
The lawyer had instructions to pass this on to me as soon as Guy died. I’m still trying to decide what to do with this. Maybe nothing. Maybe I’ll just write a letter; that would seem the most obvious thing. Or maybe I’ll fly off to the other side of the world without telling anybody and turn up on her doorstep and ring the bell. That would be fitting. Though, knowing Guy, this could turn out to be a joke, and she’ll stand there blinking uncomprehendingly at me and we’ll have no connection of any sort whatsoever.
Since the funeral, Rob and Ali have split up. Rob is now based in Mountain View, California. Ali is in Dubai.
Pris seems happy with Rick; we hardly hear from her. They’re still on the south coast.
Paul has been offered a promotion within his company that will mean relocating to New York City. The news leaked and there is already talk of him being deselected as Labour party candidate for the Bewford City constituency at the next election.
Haze – amazingly – appears to be on the run in France after certain financial irregularities came to light at the women’s football team he managed, following his abrupt dismissal. Hol says it’s hard to know whether this is hopelessly tawdry or actually quite impressive.
Hol and I live together, for now, in her little flat in Maida Vale. I have the boxroom, which has just enough space for a sort of upper-bunk single bed with a desk underneath – this is where I play HeroSpace – and a clothes rail. There is no room in the tiny kitchen for a washing machine; we go to a launderette. Hol is paying me back the remainder of what she owes by still covering all the rent. I chip in for half the other outgoings. This suits both of us. Hol is fairly house-proud herself, but I keep the place extremely neat and tidy.
No more has ever been said about the night that Hol came into my room, or what might have happened, and Hol is a little more formal and correct with me than she used to be, I think.
I’m not sure I really like London very much; it’s so noisy and frenetic and people seem to struggle to find the time to be polite to each other. But, still, it’s exciting, and we’ve been to see lots of places I’d only ever heard of or seen on TV or film, which is fun. I suppose London will do for now.
I can’t decide if I want to move back up here at some point, or not. I miss it, but Hol says sometimes missing somebody or something is just a natural part of your life, and doesn’t mean you absolutely have to go back to that person or place.
Tricky one.
Also, Hol takes me along to as many films and previews as she’s allowed to, which is nice of her. I’ve started a film review website of my own to try to look as professional as I can, though not all the distributors and preview theatres are falling for this. The website is doing okay, actually. I can’t dissect a film the way Hol can, or put it in the context of others going back to way-back-when, but apparently I have some fresh and original insights. So there.
‘Well, Kit,’ Hol says, giving the chain-link fence a rattle just for the hell of it, then dusting her hands off, ‘in the end we’re just standing here looking into a big fucking hole in the ground.’
‘Yes,’ I say, and take one last look round at the expanded emptiness of the quarry. ‘We are.’
‘Never mind.’ She looks at her mobile. ‘Come on,’ she says, stuffing it back in her pocket. ‘Time for tea with Mrs Willoughby.’
We get back into Hol’s little faded red Polo and drive off.