Iain Banks - Dead Air

‘Hello?’ she said, her voice barely audible over the roar of the wind.

‘You’ll catch your death, you know.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

I raised my voice. ‘Your death,’ I said, almost shouting. I was already feeling foolish, the grand gesture of the occasion evaporating, shredded by the noise and force of the wind. ‘You’ll catch it.’

‘Yes?’ she said, as though this was new and important information I’d presented her with.

Gawd, I thought, she’s some sort of simpleton. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘will I just…?’ I gestured back into the bedroom, meaning to suggest I’d leave her to whatever solitary communing with rooftop nature she’d been indulging in.

She tipped and lowered her head, holding one hand to an ear. She shook her head.

‘Shit,’ I said under my breath, and stepped out onto the stones. Well, what else was I going to do? She was beautiful, the guy she’d been with had left the hoo-ha without her, I was thirty-five and starting to watch my weight and check my hair for grey each morning, and I wasn’t so entangled elsewhere that I couldn’t handle the potential extra complication of getting tangled up with a woman who looked as good as she did. Providing she wasn’t simple, and unlikely as it probably was anyway. Rain sprinkled itself across my face and the wind uncombed my hair.

‘Ken Nott. Pleased to meet you.’ I held out my hand.

She looked at it for a moment, then took it in hers. ‘Celia. Merrial,’ she said. ‘How do you do.’

Her voice was soft, with a faint accent that was probably French.

‘You okay out here?’ I asked.

‘Yes. Is it all right?’

‘Sorry?’

‘For me to be here? Is it all right? It is permitted?’

With a sinking feeling, I realised that she hadn’t recognised me from earlier, down in the party. It sounded like she thought I was a security guard for Mouth Corp come to shoo her back to the properly appointed fun-having territory down below.

‘Haven’t the faintest idea,’ I admitted. ‘Civilian here myself.’ This wasn’t leading anywhere. Make excuses and leave. This was preposterously early to be baling out of a potential situation, but some sort of instinct I would usually ignore was telling me to forget it. ‘Listen,’ I said. ‘If you’re okay, I’ll just leave you to it. I just… you know, I saw you out here and…’ I wasn’t even handling my withdrawal gracefully.

She ignored this. Her head was canted to one side again, quizzical. She frowned and said, ‘Ah. I know your name.’

‘Do you now?’

‘You are on the radio,’ she said, brushing away a strand of hair sticking to her mouth. She had a small mouth and full lips. ‘Someone said you would be here.’ Her teeth were very white as she gave a little, tentative smile. ‘I listen to you.’

That was me hooked. As far as my ego was concerned she might as well have claimed to be my biggest fan. At the same time, a tiny crease of disappointment ruffled my contentment. Intelligent, rich, over-achieving and wildly influential though I naturally assumed all my listeners to be, there was something insufficiently exotic for a woman like this to be listening to my pop-raddled, commercial-choked show on daytime radio. Between the hours of ten and midday this woman ought to be perfecting her technique playing Bach fugues on her grand piano, or wandering the galleries clutching a draft of her thesis, standing in front of vast canvases, nodding wisely. She should be a Radio Three type, I told myself; certainly not listening to any radio station with an exclamation mark in its title.

I’m sorry, you fall beneath the acceptable standards of intriguingness that my over-heated and deeply wretched romantic sensibilities demand. Very Groucho altogether. Sad git.

‘I’m very flattered,’ I told her.

‘Are you? Why?’

I gave a small laugh. A gust of wind thudded into us, showering us with rain and making us sway together, as if dancing to the pummelling music of the storm. ‘Oh, I’m just always flattered when I meet somebody who admits to listening to my terminally facile and disposable show. And you-’

‘Is it really so?’ she said. ‘Do you really think it is facile and disposable?’

I had been going to say something on the lines of, And you are the most stunningly beautiful creature at this party largely composed of stunningly beautiful creatures, which makes your interest in me especially gratifying… but instead she was having the temerity to interrupt a professional talker, and taking my small talk seriously. Didn’t know which was worse.

‘Well, it can certainly be facile,’ I said. ‘And when it comes down to it, it is just local radio, even if it’s local radio for London. Noam Chomsky it ain’t.’

‘You admire Noam Chomsky,’ she said, nodding and stroking away another strand of hair from her mouth. The wind was howling round the building, scattering rain drops over the two of us. It was April, and not too cold, but there was still a fair amount of wind-chill factor happening here. ‘You have mentioned him a few times, I think.’

I held up my hands. ‘Closest thing to a hero I have.’ I folded my arms. ‘You really do listen to the show, don’t you?’

‘Sometimes. You say such things. I am always amazed that you get away with what you do. So often I think, They won’t let him get away with that, and yet, next time I switch on, there you are.’

‘We do call the studio the-’

‘Departure Lounge,’ she said, smiling. ‘I know.’ She nodded. The wind hit her in the back, making her take a step forwards, towards me. I put a hand out but she adjusted her stance, straightening again. She didn’t seem to notice the gale blowing round her. ‘You must make many enemies.’

‘The more the better,’ I agreed airily. ‘There are so many people deserving of utter contempt, don’t you think?’

‘You really don’t care?’

‘That I might make enemies of my elders and betters?’

‘Yes.’

‘Not enough to stop.’

‘You really don’t worry that somebody might take such offence at what you say they try to harm you?’

‘I refuse to worry,’ I told her. ‘I wouldn’t hand people like that even the partial victory of knowing I was concerned.’

‘So, then, are you brave?’ she asked with a small smile.

‘No, I’m not brave. I just don’t give a fuck.’

She seemed to find this amusing, lowering her head and smiling at the paving stones.

I sighed. ‘Life’s too short to spend it worrying, Celia. Carpe diem.’

‘Yes, life is short,’ she agreed, not looking at me. Then she did. ‘But you might risk making it shorter.’

I held her gaze. I said, ‘I don’t care,’ and, just then, there on the roof in the loud midst of the storm, I meant it.

She lifted her face up a little, as another gust shook her and me in sudden succession. I really wanted to take hold of that perfect little chin and kiss her.

‘Look,’ I said, ‘apart from anything else, like I say, it’s just radio. And it’s a reputation I have, that I’ve developed. Mostly by getting sacked from other radio stations, admittedly, but it’s what I’m known for. I kind of get a special discount because of that. People know I’m paid to be controversial, or just plain rude. I’m a shock jock. The Shock Jock, Jock the Shock, if you prefer your definitions in tabloid form. If Jimmy Young or one of the Radio One DJs or even Nicky Campbell said the things I do there’d be some sort of outcry, but because it’s me people just dismiss it. To really make an impression these days I’d have to say something actually slanderous, and that would get me fired. Though that’ll probably happen soon enough anyway.’

‘Still, it seems strange to approach what you do the way you do. Most people want to be liked. Or even loved.’ She presented this as though it was something that might not have occurred to my sorry, cynical ass before.