Iain Banks - Dead Air

It did cross my mind to shake my head, or just ignore her, or pretend to fall asleep; in other words, or their lack, tease her, but instead I said, ‘You’ve changed your mind?’ She had said to remain silent throughout.

She nodded slowly. Her long, thick hair fell spooled, tangled, heavy on my chest. ‘Just the beginning was enough. And that you were prepared to.’

‘Uh-huh?’

‘Uh-huh?’ she said, mimicking me.

I took a handful of her hair, rolling my fist around in it, taking up all slack. Her head tipped towards my hand. Her large, darkly amber eyes gazed down. ‘You are a very singular woman, Celia.’

‘Will we do this again?’

I raised my head and made a show of looking downwards. ‘In about five minutes, I’d guess.’

She smiled. ‘You will meet me again?’

‘Oh, I should think so.’

‘Good. We won’t be able to go out, to meet in public. It will have to be like this.’

‘This is okay. I can handle this.’

‘Handle me,’ she whispered, lowering herself into my arms.

So began my erratic, erotic tour of the luxury hotels of London. Every few weeks – apart from once when holidays got in the way – a courier would deliver a slim package holding only a hotel key or key card. The accompanying phone call got shorter and shorter each time until all I would hear was, ‘The Connaught, three one six,’ or ‘The Landmark, eight one eight,’ or ‘The Howard, five zero three.’

In a succession of tall-ceilinged, feverishly hot, darkened suites, on top of a series of King- or Emperor-size beds, Celia and I pursued our sporadic affair.

That first time, in the Dorchester, it turned out we had longer than she’d first said; not until six but until ten, when she really had to go. I’d nodded off at one point, into sharply sultry dreams of swimming in thick red perfume beneath a fiery lilac sun, then woke to find all the lights out but the room illuminated from outside and below and her standing by the windows, looking out between the drawn-back curtains, the silvery lustre of a full moon combining on her skin with the glow of the hotel’s floodlights reflecting from the ceiling and framing her slim, dark form with gold.

I padded up behind her, held her, and she put her hands on mine at her shoulder as I nuzzled her neck and hair. That was when I asked her about the long, swirling mark on her left flank, and she told me about the lightning strike.

The dark bodies of Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park lay strung with pinprick cords of light. Below us, cradled in the scoop of the building’s forecourt facing Park Lane, a great dark tree rustled in a freshening breeze, new growth all green and black and full of life and movement and promise.

‘Who are you, Celia? Tell me about yourself,’ I said into the darkness, later. ‘If you want.’

‘What do you want to know?’

‘Everything about you.’

‘Everything would be boring, Kenneth. Don’t you know that? Knowing everything about anybody would be boring.’

‘Not you, I suspect.’

‘I told you; I am a married woman, a housewife, a listener.’

‘Perhaps you could start a little closer to the beginning.’

‘I am from Martinique. You know where that is?’

‘I know.’

‘My father was a fisherman, my mother a waitress. I have four brothers, five sisters.’

‘My, your parents were busy. Sexual athleticism runs in the family, then.’

‘I studied languages, I became a model, I moved to Paris, then London. I met a man who I thought loved me.’ She hesitated. ‘Perhaps that’s not fair to him. He thought he did love me. We both did, then.’

‘What about you loving him?’

Her body tensed fractionally against mine, then relaxed again. ‘Love,’ she said, as if saying, tasting the word for the first time, getting the measure of its meaning in her mouth and mind. ‘I don’t know.’ I felt her turn her head to stare off into the shadowy heights of the room. Eyelashes flitted against the skin of my shoulder. ‘I felt fondness for him. He was kind to me. He helped me. Helped me considerably. I don’t mean to say that I married him out of gratitude, but I felt that I knew him and that he would be a good husband.’

‘And is he?’

She was silent for a while. ‘He treats me well. He has never struck me. He became cold towards me about the time when it was found I could not have children.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘The point is more that it does not matter that he is a good husband to me; what matters is that he is a bad man to others. He would say they always deserved it, but…’

‘Did you know he was like that when you married him?’

She was silent for a moment. ‘Yes and no. I knew a little. I did not want to know it all. I should have.’

‘Do you mean to stay with him?’

‘I would be afraid to tell him I was leaving him. Also, practically my whole family works for one of his businesses now, on the island.’

‘Ah.’

‘Ah, indeed. What about you, Kenneth?’

‘What don’t you know from my many exciting and unfailingly accurate profiles in top media outlets?’

‘Your marriage? Your wife?’

‘I married a nurse called Jude. Judith. Met in a club when I was between jobs, not long after I moved down to London. Great sex, similar interests, robust cross-platform political beliefs with only a few troublesome legacy systems – she believed in astrology – compatible groups of friends… and we certainly thought we were in love. She didn’t really want to get married but I insisted. I knew what I was like; I knew I was very likely to stray, or certainly to want to stray, to be unfaithful, and I came up with this bizarre concept that if I got married then the fact I’d made a solemn promise to her to forsake all others, made a legally binding commitment, would stop me.’ I paused. ‘Probably the single most barmy idea I’ve ever entertained in my entire adult life, and that when, by common assent, the field of other contenders is both wide and deep.’ I shrugged gently, so as not to jar her head where it lay against my shoulder and chest. ‘However. I cheated, she found out, confronted me with it, and I swore it wouldn’t happen again. I meant it, too. I always meant it. Repeat until no longer funny.’ I breathed deeply. ‘She’s okay now; in a stable relationship. I still see her now and again.’

‘Do you still love her?’

‘No, ma’am.’

‘You still sleep with her.’

I felt my body jerk. She must have felt it too. ‘You guessing, Celia?’ I asked. ‘Or are we in some creepy Play Misty For Me vibe here?’

‘Guessing, you would call it. I am good at it.’

‘Well, as you guessed.’ I shrugged again. ‘We never mean to, it just happens… Old times’ sake, I suppose. Lame, but true. But anyway not for a while.’

‘And you have a regular girlfriend?’

‘Yes. Nice girl. Bit mad. Works for a record company.’

‘She doesn’t know, I hope. About you and me. I hope nobody does.’

‘Nobody.’

‘You don’t mind? Some men like to boast.’

‘Not me. And no, I don’t mind.’

Usually we met on a Friday, but not every time. Never at the weekends. She said this was because she liked to listen to me on the radio beforehand. Soon, with every show I did, I’d start to wonder, was she listening? More to the point, was she listening in an eight-hundred-quid-a-night suite, slowly undressing in the darkness while a cranked-up heating system wound round to maximum gradually toasted every molecule of air in the place?

On several occasions, especially on Fridays, I had to stand people up. Jo, a couple of times. I claimed a commiserating, men-only drinking party with a just-dumped colleague on the first occasion, and plain alcohol-induced forgetfulness in a mobile-reception-free dive bar the second time. Jo shouted at me on both occasions, then wanted to have sex, which was awkward. I just about managed it the first time, though I felt a) sore, and b) guilty that I was still thinking about Ceel. The second time I faked incapability through drunkenness. I began to make Friday night engagements tentative rather than firm.