Iain Banks - The Business

'Oh, you're no trouble, Ms Telman.' (I'd suggested we might try first names, but Miss H had seemed almost girlishly embarrassed, and shaken her head.) 'It's always been a pleasure to have you here.'

'Even the time I got stuck in the dumb-waiter?'

'Ah, well, you weren't the first, or the last.'

This had happened the second time I'd been brought to Blysecrag by Mrs Telman, when I'd been ten. The first time I'd been so stunned and awestruck by the place I'd barely dared to sit down. When I'd visited a second time I'd been a lot more blasé, and had decided to explore. The dumb-waiter I'd elected to do some of my exploring in had got stuck and it took several strong men a couple of hours to rescue me. Uncle Freddy had thought it was all quite a hoot and had sent down supplies of cakes and lemonade (to my intense embarrassment, he'd also hollered down that I was just to shout out if I needed a chamber-pot lowered to me, too).

'Has anyone ever explored every single nook and cranny of this place?'

'Mr Ferrindonald did, when he first bought it,' Miss Heggies said. 'And I think I have. Though I'm not sure you can ever be certain.'

'You never get lost?'

'Not for years. Sometimes I have to think where I am, mind.' Miss Heggies sipped at her whisky. 'Mr Ferrindonald used to tell me he knew of secret passages that he wasn't telling me about, but I think he was just teasing me. He always said he'd leave the map in his will, but, well…'

'I'm going to miss Freddy,' I said.

Miss Heggies nodded. 'He could be a rascal sometimes, but he was a good employer. And a friend to me.' She looked sad.

'Were you glad he never married?'

She looked sharply at me. 'Glad, Ms Telman?'

'I'm sorry. I hope you don't mind me asking. I just always felt that this was almost as much your house as his, and if he'd brought a wife here, well, you'd have had to share the place with her too.'

'I hope I'd have got on as well with her as I did with him,' Miss Heggies said, only a little defensively. 'I suppose it would have depended on the wife, but I would have done my best.'

'What if Uncle Freddy had married Mrs Watkins? Could you have got on with her?'

She looked away. 'I think so.'

'She seemed pleasant enough, I thought.'

'Yes. Pleasant enough.'

'Do you think she loved him?'

Miss Heggies drew herself up in her chair and smoothed her hair with one hand. 'I really wouldn't be able to say, Ms Telman.'

'I hope she did, don't you? It would be good to know that someone loved him. Everyone should have that.'

She was silent for a while. 'I think many of us did, in our various ways.'

'Did you, Miss Heggies?'

She sniffed, and looked into her whisky glass. 'I had a lot of affection for the old rogue. Whether you'd call it love, I don't know.' She looked me in the eye. 'We were never…linked, Ms Telman.' She looked at the ceiling and around the walls. 'Except by this place.'

'I see.'

'Any road, in the end it isn't my house, Ms Telman. Never was. I am a servant; he could have dismissed me at any time. I don't mean that he ever threatened me with that, or ever reminded me of it, just that it's always at the back of your mind.'

'Well, that can't happen now.'

She nodded. 'It was very good of Mr Ferrindonald to leave me the flat and to provide for me.'

'Will you stay here once it's handed over to the National Trust?'

She looked mildly shocked. 'Of course.'

'I imagine they might want to employ you. Actually, I think they'd be foolish not to. Would you work for them?'

'I might.' She nodded. 'It would depend. If I was wanted, I'd be happy to.'

'I suspect Uncle Freddy would have liked that.'

'Do you?'

'Definitely.'

She looked round again, took a deep breath and said, 'This has been my love, Ms Telman, this place. I've been in service here one way or another for nearly fifty years, since I left school, for your uncle, his business, the army and the Cowle family. I've never thought to marry, never wanted to. Blysecrag's been all I've ever needed.' She lifted her head up. 'There are those here and in the village who think I've missed out on life, but I don't think I have, not at all. There's plenty of others to fall in love and have lots of children. I've given my life to this house, and I haven't regretted it…well, not for more than an hour or two at a time, and then not often.' She gave a small, flickering, vulnerable smile. 'We all have our blues, don't we? But I wouldn't have changed anything, if I could have.' She laughed lightly and swirled her whisky as she looked at it. 'Goodness me, listen to me. I'll be dancing on the tables next.'

I raised my glass. 'To Blysecrag,' I said.

And so we drank a toast to the place, and maybe to places in general.

'Suvinder? Hi. How are you?'

'Oh, Kathryn. I'm sorry. I did not mean to call you. I must have pressed the wrong button. Umm. Are you well? You sound sleepy.'

'That's okay. I'm fine. You all right?'

'I am well, but I had better go or you will be upset with me. Say you forgive me for calling you so late.'

'I forgive you.'

'I bid you good night, Kathryn.'

'Good night, sweet prince.'

'Oh, Kathryn!'

'That's a quotation, Suvinder.'

'I know! But you said it to me! I shall sleep well. Good night, dearest Kathryn.'

I rang Adrian Poudenhaut the following morning. He was in Italy, picking up his new Ferrari from the factory in Modena; he'd be driving it back to the UK over the next couple of days. I told him I wanted to meet up with him and he sounded surprised, so I reckoned Madame Tchassot hadn't said anything to him. We arranged to rendezvous in Switzerland the following day.

Miss Heggies drove me to York in her old Volvo estate. I think we both had slight hangovers. I took a GNER train to London (tea reasonable; opened the lap-top but beyond playing a few variations with the calculator on a certain ten-figure number, didn't do anything, just sat staring out of the window and decided the best bit of the East Coast main line was definitely from York northwards, not south; played k. d. lang's Ingenue on the Walkman and sang along in my head. Where is your head, indeed, Kathryn?). Taxi to Heathrow (annoying driver; did not take I'm Reading A Newspaper hint and only finally shut up when I put the earphones in). Played Kate and Anna McGarrigle's Matapedia all the way along the M4. Folk; not the sort of thing I'm usually into, but just sublime. Degree of tearfulness at some of the tracks; running repairs to face required in lounge rest room; gave self talking to. Swissair flight to Geneva; service coolly correct and flawless as usual. LWB silver-coloured 7-series company car to Château d'Oex; elderly but efficient driver — called Hans — thankfully silent.

Switzerland. Where the money comes. I have mixed feelings about the place. On the one hand it is sumptuously beautiful in a rugged, blatant and snowy way, and everything works. On the other hand they shout at you for crossing the street when there's no traffic visible for miles, just because the crossing signal is showing a red man not a green man, and if you pass them in a car doing a kilometre more than the legal limit, they honk their horns and flash their lights.

Plus, it's where all the Third World dictators and other assorted robbing bastards stash the loot they've sucked out of their own countries and their own people. This is a whole country where money goes to money; this is one of the richest nations on Earth, and some of the dosh comes from some of the poorest countries (who, once they've been bled dry by the latest thieving scumbag, then get the IMF stepping in with orders to Tighten Their Belts ).

Somehow, being whisked along the N1 towards Lausanne, in the midst of all the other Beemers, Mercs, Audis, Jags, Bentleys, Rollers, Lexi and the rest, it all looked even more self-satisfied and opulent than it usually did. The snow-topped mountains around the lake alone appeared aloof from it all. Even those, though, didn't look quite the same any more. One of the things I've always liked about Switzerland is that they've civilised a lot of their hills: you can get cable cars up there, you can drive up them, between them, through them and underneath them, or climb into a train and be clunked and trundled to cafés and restaurants at the top where the only things more breathtaking than the views are the prices. Then you can ski back down. I always appreciated that; that accessibility, that refusal to treat each and every peak as something which absolutely had to be left pristine, so that only the mountaineers and the local fauna ever got to appreciate it. And I still liked the idea in theory, yet now, looking at the peaks across the lake, I couldn't help comparing them unfavourably with those of Thulahn, and almost scorning them for being so compromised, so tamed.