Iain Banks - Dead Air

‘But-’

‘Though there are signs of improvement. Band of Brothers had proper explosions. I mean, that was the least of its brilliance, but it was a sign they were taking the whole thing seriously, that the special effects people were making the explosions look like real high-explosive explosions look, with just maybe a single flash and stuff flying everywhere, rather than all this vaporised petrol or whatever it is; these great big rolling fiery clouds of burning gas, that’s so bullshit.’

‘Why?’

‘Why?’

‘Yeah. Why does all this matter? It’s only the goddamn movies, Ken.’

‘Because it isn’t fucking true, that’s why,’ I said, waving my arms for emphasis.

‘So,’ Craig said, ‘what happened in that TV studio?’

‘I’ve told you.’

‘Yeah, you have told me, and you’ve told me that what you told me is the truth. But it isn’t what you’ve told other people, it isn’t what you’re putting in your sworn statement, is it?’

I turned on the couch to face him, ignoring Sigourney and her doomed chums. ‘What the hell has that got to do with anything?’

‘Ken, you’re always banging on about truth and just sticking to the facts, but here you are telling lies in public.’

‘But there’s a point to all this! Haven’t you understood anything?’

‘I understand exactly what you’re doing, Ken,’ Craig said reasonably. ‘I even applaud it. I think.’ He stretched back in the couch, hands behind his neck. ‘I mean, it’s resorting to violence, which is more your bad person’s stock-in-trade reaction, but I see what you’re doing. All I’m saying is that in trying to make this point you’re having to compromise this thing about telling the truth even when it hurts.’

‘Craig, shit, come on; I’m no better than anybody else; I tell lies all the time. Mostly in the context of relationships. God, I’d love to be a dear, sweet, faithful, one-woman man, but I’m not. I’ve lied to… most of the women I’ve known. I’ve lied to my employers, to the press, to-’

‘And me?’

That drew me up short. I sat back, thinking. ‘Well, there are… well, they used to be called white lies, didn’t they? Relatively unimportant untruths necessary to… spare people’s feelings, or to prevent people becoming complicit in… well, either complicit or-’

‘I do kind of know what a white lie is, thanks, Ken.’

‘Yeah; stuff that you need to tell people, even friends, if you’re being untruthful to somebody else.’ The on-board, on-line, on-message censor that was usually employed looking a few words or phrases ahead to make sure I didn’t swear on air was here doing something similar so that I didn’t actively lie to Craig, even as I was carefully not telling him the whole truth, which would have involved admitting I’d lied to him a lot about the night I’d spent with his wife. ‘I wouldn’t tell you the truth when I was off fucking somebody else if I thought that Jo might ask you if you knew where I was. Come on, man. You do it too; you’re doing it now. Where are you going later? Who are you meeting?’

‘That’s not the same. I’m just not telling you. You can’t compare refusing to tell at all with deliberately telling a lie.’

‘Yeah, but it’s still not being open, is it?’

‘So fucking what? You don’t have a right to know everything about my private life.’

‘But I’m your best friend!’ I looked at him. ‘Amn’t I?’

‘Best male friend, definitely.’

‘Who’s your best female friend?’

‘Well, what about Nikki?’

‘Nikki?’

‘Yeah; hey, I’ve known her all her life, for one thing.’

‘Yeah, but-’

‘We’ve had too many great times together to count, been through tough things too, plus she’s great fun to be with, she’s caring, funny, a great listener, understanding… What?’

I was shaking my head. ‘You have to let the girl go, Craig. Okay, she’s a great pal and all that, but-’

‘I’ve let her go!’ Craig protested. ‘She’s at Oxford. She’s loving it; she hardly comes home any more, she’s got more friends than she knows what to do with. For all I know she’s already had more sexual partners than I’ve had in my fucking life. Ken, believe me, I’m pleased for her about all this and I don’t want to smother her in affection or anything. But she’ll always be a best friend.’

‘Okay,’ I said. ‘Okay. But you have to be a bit funny about the sex thing.’

‘Ken, I had umpteen years to prepare myself for the fact my child would have an independent sexual existence. Credit me with some forethought. And some… understanding. We’ve talked about this stuff, Ken; the three of us. Nikki takes precautions. We didn’t raise her to be an idiot.’ He prodded me on the knee with one finger. ‘Anyway. That’s all beside the point. The point being that I’m being truthful in telling you I’m not going to tell you something, I’m not-’

‘All right already!’ I said. ‘Distinction taken.’ And conversational direction subtly changed, you lying hypocritical dissembling louse, I told myself.

‘Anyway, it’s not just stuff like that,’ I said, wanting to move swiftly on and away from all this lying and relationship stuff. ‘Or stuff like using a parsec as a unit of time like they did in the original Star Wars and didn’t even take it out in the new edition. It’s the whole way movies, Hollywood movies, are put together. I’ve been thinking about this; imagine if paintings were produced the way Hollywood films are.’

Craig sighed, and I suspected he suspected there was a proto-rant coming up, which was true.

‘The Mona Lisa as we know it would be just the first draft; in the second she’d be blond, in the third smiling happily and showing some cleavage, by the fourth there’d be her and her equally attractive and feisty sisters and the landscape behind would be a jolly seaside scene; the fifth draft would get rid of her and keep the sisters, lose the seaside for a misty mountain and make the girls both red-headed and a bit more, like, ethnic looking, and by the sixth or seventh the mountain would be replaced by a dark and mysterious jungle and there’d just be the one girl again, but she’d be a dusky maiden wearing a low-cut wrap and with a smouldering, alluring look and an exotic bloom in her long black tresses… Bingo – La Giaconda would look like something you were embarrassed your elderly uncle bought in Woolworths in the early seventies and never had the wit to get rid of in subsequent redecorations.’

‘So what?’ Craig asked. ‘If films were all made the way paintings are every one would look like an Andy Warhol movie.’ He gave a sort of stage shiver. ‘Which, whatever it does for you, surely scares the hell out of me.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Anyway. I’d better get ready.’ He stood up.

‘You’ve nearly an hour,’ I said.

‘Yeah, but I need a shower and everything.’ He headed for the door. ‘Help yourself to stuff, okay?’

‘Thanks,’ I said. I tipped my head to one side in a way that I knew looked cute – and hard to resist – when Ceel did it. ‘Who is she, Craig? Anyone I know?’

‘Not telling you.’

‘It is somebody I know. It’s not Emma, is it?’

He just laughed.

‘So it’s somebody new?’

‘Ken, this isn’t any of your business.’

‘Yeah, I know. But it is somebody new, isn’t it?’

‘Could be,’ he said, the (in retrospect) bastard, with a small smile.

‘Is she our age? Younger? Older? Children? How’d you meet?’

He shook his head as he opened the door. ‘You’re like a fucking journalist yourself, so you are.’

‘Hope she’s worth it!’ I called as he left the living-room and headed upstairs.