The Steep Approach to Garbadale (16 page)

She owned some sort of red four-wheel-drive estate thing called a Forester. She drove punctiliously, almost primly in town, then like a rally driver on a Special Stage when she hit the open road, especially in the Highlands. He’d been alarmed the first couple of times she’d driven him anywhere at speed, but now felt quite relaxed about it, having decided she was a judicious, quick-witted and extremely fast-reacting driver. It was just that she drove rather quickly, as well - that was all.

‘I—’ He stops, flops back in the bed. They had promised from the start that they would always be honest with each other. He glances at her. Now she is propped up on one elbow, looking at him. Her right breast, under her, is a long lozenge of loveliness, her left a warm symmetrical scoop of cream. She looks curious, smiling faintly. He waves his hands, lets them fall back. ‘Part of me wants you to come with me and stay at the fucking place.’

‘This part?’ she says, briefly sliding her hand under the duvet to squeeze his cock.

‘Mm-hmm. Another part is embarrassed by my family, wants you to have nothing to do with them in case they put you off me. And . . . and another part doesn’t want to have to cope with you and Sophie in the same . . . frame of reference.’

‘Well, I was only intending to drop you there and then bugger off, frankly; canter up a hill or two, taking the tent or bivvy bag. Bunk-housing in your ghastly Scots Baronial monstrosity wasn’t really part of the plan.’

‘Oh. Okay. Sorry.’

‘Whatever, the offer stands.’ She lies back, lifting her hands up in front of her face to inspect her fingers and nails. ‘Or Fielding might take you.’ She looks over at him. ‘And do you still have that ancient smokescreen on two wheels you call a motorbike?’

‘Sold it,’ he tells her. ‘Doc said that wasn’t helping the white finger either. Had to go.’

‘So: me, Fielding, or just hire a car. No shortage of means. Just go.’ She returns to the close inspection of her hands, then reaches over to the bedside table and puts on her glasses, which have black, rectangular frames.

What do I really want?
he thinks. This is, of course, an extremely good question. It was just such a pity that, life being as it tended to be, it so rarely came as part of a matched pair, with an extremely good answer.

Well, not being an idiot would be a start
. He puts out his hand and strokes Verushka’s arm. ‘That’d be great if you took me. I’d really appreciate it. Thanks.’

She glances over at him, brows furrowing over the black-framed glasses. ‘Are you sure?’ she asks. ‘The journey could be fraught with safety.’

He grins, traces the line of her full, smiling lips. ‘I’m sure.’

 
Alban and Sophie begin to conduct a sort of secret, technically chaste affair which only goes as far as what they agree is the rather quaint term, heavy petting - the stuff that some swimming pools still have signs saying is banned, along with running by the poolside, jump-bombing from the side, and standing on somebody else’s shoulders.

Sometimes she just openly goes with him to help with chores in the garden, sometimes she says she’s taking Scrabbles for a hack, then leaves her tethered, cropping nearby grass, sometimes she says she’s going for a walk, sometimes she says she’s going to the summer-house to read and study. Whatever; it always ends with them hidden by long grass or inside the tent-like space of a big rhododendron bush or in a half-ruined shed on the west edge of the estate or one of half a dozen other secret, private places he knows of.

It’s not simple, though. In fact, it’s very complicated.

Quite apart from the logistics involved with maintaining the secrecy, there is the ever present problem of, How far do they go? Her breasts have become gloriously familiar territory to him now; he feels he knows each pore and microscopic pucker, each tiny, soft wisp of down, and is convinced that he carries a touch-memory of their weight and giving firmness in his hands. Her nipples are like little brown raspberries, sweet and full and succulent.

A couple of times, when she’s worn a dress and his hands aren’t filthy, she has let him put one hand inside her panties, and he has found the hot, moist slit, and stroked and slipped his fingertips inside her, but she usually has to stop him before this can go on for very long - gasping, face flushed, heart pounding - because, she confesses, it’s just too much, too tempting, too likely to lead to what they can’t do because they have no condoms and are both terrified of her getting pregnant and anyway, and anyway . . .

After a week of this, she unzips his jeans and takes his cock out. She’s too rough with it at first and he has to show her how to grasp and stroke and gently squeeze it. He comes quickly in her hand and she makes a face.

‘Hoo-hoo!’ he laughs, looking up at the blue sky above the thick, feathery tops of the breeze-swayed grass.

She says, ‘Yeah, well, sorry, but; yuk.’

‘We could use a tissue next time,’ he suggests. He’s aware he’s sounding hopelessly eager. He really hopes this hasn’t put her off the whole idea.

‘Hmm.’ She wipes her hand on the beaten-down grass and looks dubiously at his penis, which is still stiff.

Or you could suck it
, he wants to say, but doesn’t. He cleans up with a paper hanky from his jeans pocket and she lies down beside him on the flattened grass, stroking him.

There is also, at the same time, the larger moral question regarding, What the hell does anything matter when we are forever on the brink of killing ourselves - killing everybody?

This is not a trivial matter. This is 1985, and their parents, the previous generation, they both agree, have managed very successfully to almost completely fuck up the world, and left the solutions - the tidying-up, if any such healing is possible - to the following generation, and their children’s children, and their - well, you get the idea. The world still stands on the brink of all-out nuclear war, the superpowers constantly find new excuses to confront each other, half of Africa seems to be starving, hundreds of millions go to bed hungry while the West stuffs its bulging collective face with greasy fries and fat-pumped hamburgers made from diseased meat, and on top of all that this Aids thing looks like making their generation’s sex-lives more fraught, limited and dangerous than they ever deserved. It’s so unfair. Really unfair; not the sort of unfair kids and teenagers are always complaining about to their parents or teachers or anybody else in authority, but genuinely, manifestly, no-question-about-it unfair.

You always hope and you try to believe that there must be a way forward, because we - humans, the species - are where we are, so we’ve always found a way forward before, but sometimes hope is a difficult thing to hold on to. Jeez, you just had to watch the news . . .

They talk about this a lot. It matters to them. At the same time, he is aware, being honest with himself, that he’s kind of pushing this apocalyptic vision and getting her to talk about the sheer snow-balling awfulness of the world because he does want them to go the whole way, he does - of course he does - want to have proper sex with her, and emphasising the dangers that lie ahead in their future lives, and the possibility that those lives might be horribly, unfairly short thanks to their parents’ idiot generation is maybe one way of getting a girl - maybe especially an intelligent, thoughtful kind of girl - to throw inhibition to the winds and - as their American cousins would express it - put out.

It’s not something to be proud of, maybe, but it’s not like he’s telling any lies here.

‘I’m thinking about it,’ she tells him, the first time he asks her to suck him off, in the old shed on the western limit of the estate, almost in Devon.

She’s stroking his cock, kneeling between his legs, his jeans down around his knees, a tissue in her other hand. He’d kind of assumed she’d put the paper hanky over his prick like a sort of soft condom, the way he does when he wanks, but she has discovered that she likes to watch his penis spasm and see the warm white liquid spurt, so she keeps the hanky ready until the last second, then catches his ejaculate on the wadded tissue, smiling as he tenses and gasps and comes.

‘Think I’m going to—’ he says.

He does, arching his back. ‘Maybe next time,’ she murmurs.

The question, they agree, is simply, How do we cope sensibly with the present quota of shit left to us by the parental generation without surrendering our souls and just accepting any amount of shit for ever, thus turning sensible acceptance into outright exploitative stupidity and becoming part of the problem, so that we go on to be just as stupid and selfish and thoughtless as the generation before?

Answers on a postcard.

They take turns; he prefers to kiss her while she wanks him; she prefers kneeling over him, watching.

‘Do you think our mums and dads did all this sort of thing?’ she asks one time, inside a little arbour formed by the tapestry hedge at the side of the south lawn and a curved coppice of sweet chestnut.

She is lying with her head on his chest. ‘I suppose so,’ he says. ‘Dad says every generation thinks it invented sex.’

She is silent for a moment. ‘I can imagine your parents doing it.’ She shivers. ‘Euw! Not mine!’

He’s thinking of Uncle James and Aunt Clara. ‘No,’ he agrees. ‘I’d rather not imagine it, either.’

‘Maybe they never have,’ she says. ‘Like, obviously James must have done it with June, cos there’s me. And June is quite sexy, I suppose. But maybe they . . .’ Her voice trails off. ‘No, wait; I think I heard them through a wall once.
That
was horrible.’

They start kissing again. She’s wearing jeans and he presses and strokes her between the legs through the jeans for a long time, long enough so that he can feel the heat and the dampness of her through the thick denim and she doesn’t stop him, just hugs him very hard and breathes faster and faster, her head buried in his neck until eventually she shudders, her arms grip him even more tightly, she bites his shoulder through his shirt and a strange, cat-like noise is forced from her lips. She gives one final shiver, then goes limp, body heaving against him as she breathes, her breath hot on his neck and cheek.

He says, ‘That was you coming, wasn’t it?’

She just lies there panting for a moment or two, then, on shaking arms, struggles to raise herself up and look at him. Her face is flushed; a beautiful scent like pine seems to fill the heavy, hanging curtain of her hair. She looks like she’s about to say something. Possibly something sarcastic, he suspects, now he thinks about it, but instead she just rolls her eyes, shakes her head and collapses back on top of him.

He grins a huge grin.

 
Fielding stares at his mobile. He doesn’t believe he’s hearing this. He knew he should have stayed in Jockland, but there was urgent stuff needing attending to back here in London, and so he had to blast south, leaving Al happily shacked up with Mathgirl. Fielding’s been ringing her at her office making a nuisance of himself, asking her to tell Alban to give him a call. Finally this harassment has paid off but now Al’s gone all uncooperative.

‘Al, I need you here. I can’t do this myself. I can try, but I may not succeed. With you, I’ve got a much better chance. We make a good team. Come on now. I’m serious. I’m kind of relying on you here, man.’ Fielding can feel himself making a face as he walks along Wardour Street, on his way for an after-work drink with some Chinese factory owners, in town to pitch units, runs and costs.

‘Look, Fielding,’ Al says, sounding far too damn calm and casual. ‘I’ve said I’ll be at the bash in Garbadale. So I’ll be there. But I’m not coming to London to try and browbeat my dad and yours into opposing the sell-off.’

‘Don’t you want to see your own parents?’

‘I’ll see them in a couple of weeks anyway.’

‘Al, I can’t believe you just don’t seem to care about this family any more. We’re in danger of losing everything and all you can do . . . You’re just happy to . . . I mean, I’m happy you’re having such a peachy time in Glasgow with Verushka, but this is our
family
at stake here, man. This is our chance to do something, to make a difference.’

‘I’m heading back to Perth in a couple of days, anyway,’ he says, like he hasn’t heard a word.

Perth. Jesus weeping H. Christ. Fielding bites back a whole clip of sarcastic comments about the comparative merits of a rainy sink estate in Perth and the glitzily moneyed buzz that is London, and just says, ‘Throwing you out, is she?’

‘Yeah,’ Al says, obviously not meaning it. ‘No, I just feel like I’m taking up too much of her time when I stay with her for longer than a few days. She’s a life she needs to lead. I start to feel I’m monopolising her after a while. Makes me uncomfortable.’

‘Right.’

Right my fragrant arse
, Fielding thinks. He’s seen them together. The woman is totally fucking gorgeous and blatantly worships him. Alban’s a fucking idiot. But Fielding’s not going to tell him. Some people just seem to spend their misbegotten lives stepping smartly out the way of anything remotely good for them and ignoring any and all good advice well-meaning friends and family might offer. It’s a gift. An anti-gift. A curse. Yeah, that’s the word, Fielding decides. A curse.

Stupid fuck.

4

I
’m in the Volley in the Valley - that’s the Volunteer Arms, Valley Street, for those not fortunate enough to be acquainted with the more select drinking emporiums of Bonnie Perth - sitting there quite the thing with Deedee (i.e. D.D., which stands for Designated Drinker) and Veepil (i.e. V.P.L. which is short for Visible Panty Liners or something). I’ve also seen Veepil’s name spelt V-PILL; there is a piece of highly fucken derogatory graffiti on a gable end in Islay Avenue which favours the latter spelling - when in walks your man Alban.

‘All Bran!’ Deedee shouts, seeing the prodigal as he comes through the door and stands looking round. Deedee is waving a suddenly empty glass. It is well known that the big man is not normally short of a sheikel or two and some of my more embarrassing friends (just let me pause while I consider who amongst said bunch would not qualify for this label, big Al himself excepted . . . well, maybe we’ll come back to that one!!) anyway they sort of exploit him a bit sometimes, though he never seems to mind. Like I say; embarrassing.