Iain Banks - Dead Air

Yeah, right, I thought. Just when I’d been hoping that maybe whatever bad shit had been going on, it wasn’t any more. Oh well.

‘Aye,’ Craig said, in response to my accusation of sounding like my mother. ‘And what do mothers know? Best.’

I shook my head. ‘People always give you this You weren’t right for each other stuff afterwards.’

‘Course they do; if anybody ever tells anybody before, when it could do some good, they get accused of being jealous or something, and then when the relationship does break up, they get accused of causing it. You can’t win. Best just keep quiet until it’s over.’

‘Did you not like Jo?’

‘I didn’t dislike Jo. I thought she was all right. This wasn’t one of those occasions where you’re waiting for it to end so you can tell your friend what you thought of his or her ex. I just meant in theory. Jo was all right, but she was nearly as daft as you, and she’s more ambitious. You need somebody who’ll steady you a bit, not a fellow nutter you can fuck.’

‘I don’t think Jo was as crazy as you seem to think she was.’

Craig tipped his head once. ‘Well, she was pretty off the rails at times. I’m amazed you lasted as long as you did.’

I sighed. ‘Yeah, Kulwinder said he was surprised we’d lasted as long as we had at the nine-eleven party.’ I watched the slow procession of big jets angling in around the distant scape of clouds, settling onto the gentle, invisible slope that would slide them west into Heathrow.

‘She tried to get off with me you know, once,’ Craig said.

I looked at him. ‘You’re kidding.’ Now this could be awkward.

‘Na; it was one time she’d lost you or something; during the summer. You’d had an argument and you’d stormed off and left your mobile behind and she assumed you’d come to mine, so she turned up on the doorstep. I invited the lass in; impolite to do anything else, specially as she was in tears. Offered her a drink, did the agony aunt thing…’

‘… Agreed what a bastard I was.’

‘Excuse me; I trod the fine line between masculine solidarity and lending a sympathetic ear to a distressed female.’

‘So one thing led to another,’ I said.

Oh shit, what if he had fucked her? Even if he wasn’t going to admit to it here, what if he had? Think, Ken. Was I bothered? Well, was I?

Not particularly. I mean, I had no right to be jealous or upset, not with Craig, anyway, given what had happened with Emma, but that sort of logical, quid-pro-quo consideration wasn’t the kind of argument that carried much weight with the set of instincts and part-programmed reactions that constitute the human heart.

‘Well, no, not one thing leading to another,’ Craig said. ‘She just grabbed me. Out of the blue.’

‘Jesus.’

‘We’d had about a half-bottle each-’

‘Wine?’

‘Yeah, of course wine; I wasn’t feeding the girl whisky.’

‘Sorry.’

‘I’d got up to uncork another-’

‘Oh yeah?’

‘Yes; I was still being polite and supportive. Fuck off with the suspicion and innuendo, will you?’

‘Sorry, sorry.’

‘Just wrapped herself around me. I turned round – surprised, you know – and she slapped her mouth over mine and grabbed my balls.’

‘Fucking hell.’ I looked up at the clouds, then back at Craig. ‘You did the decent thing, though.’

‘No, Kenneth,’ he said, stretching his long legs out. He was wearing grey trackie bottoms under a jacket last fashionable ten years ago. ‘The decent thing would have been to have shown her how wonderful the act of love can be when you do it with a real man, but I didn’t do that.’

‘Bet you snogged her for a while, you bastard. She was a good kisser.’

Craig considered this. ‘Hmm. I’d been putting that down to shock, but you’re right.’

‘You didn’t fuck her, did you?’

‘No. I did the self-sacrificing, You’re beautiful and I’m flattered but if we do we’ll both regret it in the morning thing. God help us, we even agreed it wouldn’t be right to betray you; it was worth depriving ourselves of some pleasure for your sake.’

‘Oh, fuck.’

‘Now what?’

‘Just had a terrible thought.’

‘What? Who are you calling?’

‘She went looking for me at Ed’s once.’

‘Wuh-oh.’

‘Yeah.’

Craig made as if to get up off the bench. ‘Want me to…?’

‘Na; if you’re going to see me humiliated we might as well get it over with now.’

‘You fucked her, didn’t you?’

‘No, I didn’t!’

‘Look, Ed, she told me she’d gone to yours, once. She went to Craig’s once, too, and she threw herself at him.’ (‘Hey!’ said Craig. ‘I resent the implication.’ I ignored him.) ‘You trying to tell me Jo didn’t try it on with you?’

‘Ah…’

‘Ah? Ah? Is that what you’re fucking giving me? Fucking “Ah”?’

‘Well…’

‘You did fuck her! You shite!’

‘She fuckin jumped me, man! It was practically rape!’

‘Fuck off, Ed.’

‘An anyway, she said she’d never done it wif a black guy; wot was I supposed to do? Deprive her?’

‘Don’t bring race into it, for fuck’s sake! And don’t give me this big black stud bullshit either!’

‘I didn’t bring race into it, man, she did!’

‘Aw, Ed, fuck off; how could you?’

‘I couldn’t help it, man.’

‘Well, fucking try learning, you overgrown adolescent!’

‘Look, man, I am sorry; I felt terrible the next day an it never appened again.’

‘Yeah, you’d had your fun, fucked your friend’s girl and added another notch to your fucking ceiling mirrors; why bother?’

‘Ken, listen; if I could go back in time an make it that it nevvir appened, believe me I would. I nevvir told you because I didn’t want to hurt you or do anyfin against you an Jo. I wish it just adn’t appened, I truly do. But it did, an I’m sorry, man. I really am sorry. I’m asking you to forgive me, right?’

‘Well – just – I’m not -’ I spluttered. ‘Just let me fucking be angry at you a bit longer!’ I said. ‘You bastard!’ I added, rather ineffectually.

‘Sorry, man.’

And I thought, Yeah. We’re all sorry. Everybody is so fucking sorry. It should be the fucking species’ middle name; Homo S. Sapiens. Maybe we could change it by misdeed poll.

‘… Listen,’ Ed said.

Something cold seemed to land in my guts. Oh, good grief. A ‘listen’ from Ed; now what?

‘What?’ I said.

‘You got this telly fing tomorrow, aven’t you?’

Oh fuck, he’d heard about Robe after all and worked out that I might want a gun to take into the studio. ‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Best of luck wif it, all right? Hope it goes well. You give this Nazi geezer wot-for, yeah?’

‘Yeah,’ I said.

‘You can go back to bein mad at me now if you want, or you can wait till we meet up next weekend an shout at me then. If we’re still meetin up. We still meetin up?’

‘I suppose.’

‘I’m sorry, man.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Still bruvvers?’

‘Yeah, I suppose so. Still bruvvaz.’

Craig invited me to supper. I suspected it was a sympathy thing; Nikki was staying and Emma was coming round and I think what they really wanted was a quiet evening meal with just the three of them.

What I really wanted was to see Nikki again, just to be sure that we were okay, and that nothing had changed, at least not for the worse, after the New Year party, because that kiss – those two kisses – had left me worried. I’d let her kiss me, and I’d kissed her back, and the more I’d thought about this over the intervening period, the more ashamed I’d become, and I felt a terrible urge to tell her that it had changed nothing, and of course it would never happen again, and that I was sorry, too, for the time in the Land Rover in the rain, on the day of the crash, when I’d tried – in what now felt like a deeply sad and desperate way – to persuade her to have lunch with me, and that I’d always, always be a good friend and a good uncle for her, for the rest of her life… Though at the same time I also wanted not to have to say anything at all, and to have everything be just the same as it had always been between us, with no awkwardness or distance.