The Steep Approach to Garbadale (11 page)

She’s wearing really tight jeans and a sheer black top you can see this black bra through, and she’s taken off her boots and is dancing in her bare feet and she really is blaming Alban for making her feel so totally frazzled; it’s all his fault, so he offers to dance for her, and so she gets up on his back, head over his shoulder, his arms round her thighs, and he dances like that with a couple of her girlfriends while she waves her arms about and bounces up and down, nearly sending them flying to the ground a couple of times but not quite, and a few other guys do the same thing with their girlfriends. He gets totally exhausted after a couple of songs and has to let her down and stagger dramatically to a wall of bales at the back of the barn; they sit on the ground with their backs to the bales and her leaning alongside him, laughing, until she goes and gets them both cups of the strong, cloudy cider and comes back and sort of slumps against him, still breathless and giggling, then, next thing, while the last of the sunset disappears from the western sky and the barn’s lights shine down on them, suddenly - amazingly, unaccountably, without either of them really seeming to start it - they’re kissing; just a little sort of dipping/rising mouth-peck at first, then serious, no-exclusion-zone open-mouth tongue-involving action, cider cups set aside/dropped shamelessly on to the ground, turned crushed into each other, arms pulling tighter.

After a few moments she pulls away suddenly, a massive frown on her flushed face. ‘How did this happen?’ she asks, sounding horrified.

He shakes his head. ‘I don’t know!’ he says loudly, waving his arms about. ‘Good, though, isn’t it?’

The horrified expression dissolves and she laughs and starts to say something but it’s smothered as she falls to him again, mouth against mouth against tongue against tongue.

Later, behind the barn, out of sight, while the music thuds on the far side of the corrugated metal wall, they keep kissing and cuddling and fondling and just holding each other. Her hair is the most wonderful thing he has ever smelled. He’s been allowed to undo her bra and feel her beautiful, magnificent breasts and rub her between the legs through the jeans but she won’t let him undo the jeans at all, though she strokes his cock through his jeans, up and down so that he thinks he’s probably about to come a dozen times but never quite does, and his balls ache, like a memory.

‘We really shouldn’t be doing this,’ she says at one point when they’re lying there pressed together, panting, giving their mouths a rest.

‘It’s not illegal,’ he points out.

‘Yeah, but still.’

‘Anyway, we haven’t
done
anything yet.’

‘What do you mean “yet”? What, you think we’re going to? Do you? Huh?’

He hugs her closer, buries his nose in her fabulous hair again. It smells of the outside, of the open air and every beautiful plant and flower and grass in the whole world. ‘Well,’ he says, ‘it’s crossed my mind even if it hasn’t crossed yours.’

She doesn’t say anything to that, but keeps on stroking the small of his back with one hand and the nape of his neck with the other. This goes on for some time. He thinks,
I would never grow bored with this
.

‘I’m not really a proper virgin, you know,’ she tells him.

He pulls back, looks at her.

‘Blame Scrabbles,’ she says with a small smile he can just about make out in the darkness. She shrugs. ‘Some saddle, anyway.’

‘Oh,’ he says. It takes him a while to get this. He hadn’t known it could work that way. He’s always (well, for the last couple of years or so since girls and sex started to become of interest) found this idea that females come sort of factory sealed kind of weird - like nature playing into the hands of religious nutters or something. Oh well. Even when you thought you knew everything about sex, there was always some detail left to learn. ‘Well, umm, you know,’ he says, feeling a little out of his depth here and suddenly entirely pathetic.

‘What about you? Have you done it?’ she asks. It sounds to him like she’s trying to sound casual. ‘Tell the truth.’

He thinks about lying, all the same, but then says, ‘Ahm, well, ahm, no. No. ’Fraid not. A virgin too. Totally.’

She goes quiet and still for a while, then says, ‘Well, this is just, you know.’

He doesn’t know. ‘What?’ he asks.

‘Well,’ she says. ‘Just fun.’

‘Yeah. Yeah, it’s fun. That’s true.’

‘I don’t think we’re going to do anything. I don’t think that would be - that would make sense.’

‘Yeah, okay.’

In a way he’s devastated, because this has all felt like it might be leading up - eventually, even if not tonight - to doing it properly, but on the other hand he fully expected never even to get this far with her, in fact never really thought to get anywhere with her - never to get to kiss her, certainly; not proper kissing, not with semi-serious groping too, so it’s all been a bonus in a way . . .

At the same time . . . Oh, hell, she was his cousin. Part of the family. He’d be better off doing it the first time with a civilian. This would have to do for now. This
would
do for now. This was, in the end, great. He wants to throw his head back and laugh out loud, wild and mad and uncaring, howling unhinged into the darkness, but he’s worried this would seem a bit weird and alarming, so he doesn’t.

She says, ‘Let’s kiss again.’

They end up crashing out in the barn with about a dozen other sleeping couples, snuggling together under an old tarpaulin, taking cups of water from the stuff in the barrels where the cans and bottles had been stored. A little after dawn, long before anybody stirs, she cuddles up to him, spooning against his back, nestling in, holding him, making tiny, faint, fast asleep noises.

He whispers, ‘Cuz, cuz, sweet cuz’ to her, to himself, very, very quietly, then drifts off to sleep again, smiling.

 
Great-Aunts Beryl and Doris live in the upper three-quarters of a fine tall sandstone townhouse cinched within a grand sweep of similar properties forming a terrace in deepest Hillhead. The streets are lined with cars. Amazingly, Fielding finds a parking space almost right outside.

He and Alban arrive to a house in turmoil. There are shrieks coming from inside. The front double doors are hanging wide. All the windows are open, curtains billowing from several. What appears to be orange smoke is issuing from one of the windows on the top floor.

A middle-aged man in a boiler suit is standing at the top of the relatively narrow steps rising from the garden flat beneath, holding on to one of the whorls of metal which form the end of the two elegant railings bracketing the broad front steps leading to the main dwelling. He is looking up at the open front door. Halfway between him and the doorway, a large lump of raw red meat is lying in the middle of one step. The meat looks rather squashed and blood is spattered alarmingly around it. The man looks round as Alban and Fielding walk up the steps from the street. ‘You the police?’ he asks, with what sounds like relief.

‘No,’ Fielding says firmly, ‘we’re family.’

3

M
en, Doris! There are men here! We have men!’ ‘

What’s that? Have you found it? Say again?’

‘
Men
, you cloth-eared old tortoise!’ Great-Aunt Beryl bellowed up the stairs to the first floor.

Great-Aunt Beryl was small, thin and ninety but possessed of a surprisingly powerful voice. She was dressed in faded blue overalls with a scarf tied round her head and knotted over her forehead. A few wisps of white hair protruded. She held an old-fashioned broom with a vicious-looking Bowie knife gaffer-taped to the handle. On closer inspection, the turn-ups of her overalls had been gaffer-taped to the rubber of her black Wellington boots.

‘Beryl, what’s going on?’ Alban asked.

‘So nice to see you, Alban, and you, Fielding!’ the old lady said, the Bowie knife flashing dangerously near to the two men and making them flinch as she reached out to shake their hands. ‘Come in, come in! You’ve arrived at just the right time. We have various escapees. Arm yourselves and come help. Oh, you’re men; you won’t need to arm yourselves.’

A voice floated down from the floor above. ‘Beryl, who is that? To whom are you talking?’

‘Beryl—’ Alban began.

‘Men, Doris, men! Nephews!’ Great-Aunt Beryl shouted up the stairs. She turned back to Alban. ‘What, dear?’

‘Who’s escaped?’

‘Not who, dear; what. About half a dozen mice and, now, Boris.’

‘Boris?’

‘He’s a python. Actually, he’s a she, but it was a long time before we found out and Boris rather stuck, d’you know?’

‘You have an escaped
snake
in here?’ Fielding said, looking worried, his gaze darting about the hallway. ‘How big is it?’

‘About eight feet in length.’

‘Jesus,’ Fielding said, drawing his feet together.

‘Fielding, language!’ Great-Aunt Beryl barked.

Fielding swivelled to look around the hallway again, holding on to his cousin’s sleeve as he leaned over and tried to see behind various potted plants and tall vases standing on small tables. The stretch of corridor to the side of the stairs looked suspiciously dark and extensive.

‘Beryl, are you talking to tradesmen?’

‘No, it’s - oh, do listen, dear!’

‘There’s, ah, a lump of meat lying outside,’ Fielding said, gaze flicking this way and that.

‘Yes,’ Great-Aunt Beryl said. ‘We were trying to set a trap but it fell out of the window. Then we remembered we had some indoor fireworks from the Jubilee and thought we might utilise smoke to flush the wildlife into the open, thus far without success. Largely, though, our strategy has consisted of stamping and screaming.’

‘Beryl, I demand to know who you’re talking to! I can’t hold the fort up here myself for ever, you know!’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ Great-Aunt Beryl said. She thrust the broom with the taped-on Bowie knife at Alban, who started backwards, but took hold. The old lady turned and stamped up the wide wooden stairs. ‘First thing tomorrow,’ she shouted upwards, ‘we call Doctor McLaughlin and make an appointment for another ear-syringing! ’ She turned halfway up and looked back at the two men. ‘If you see any mice,’ she told them, ‘don’t hesitate to skewer the little blighters. Boris prefers them alive, but I reckon if he’s hungry enough he’ll eat them cold.’

‘What about the snake?’ Alban asked.

‘Oh, for pity’s sake, don’t skewer Boris. Grab him behind the head. Don’t worry if he winds himself around your arm. Though of course if he goes for your neck, dissuade him gently.’

Alban smiled and raised the home-made pike as Great-Aunt Beryl disappeared round the turn in the stairs. ‘Righty-ho,’ he said. He glanced at Fielding, who was looking at him. He shrugged.

 
‘“Well, you may regard him as you wish,” Doris said to me.

‘“I shall, too,” I said.

‘“I still think he’s a jolly good egg.”

‘“Perhaps so,” I said, “but his brains are scrambled!”’

Great-Aunt Beryl threw back her head and laughed loudly. Her black wig, topped by a small hat made largely from purple feathers, tipped back alarmingly and threatened to come off, but she snapped her head forward again and it resumed its rightful place. Then she reached over and squeezed Alban’s forearm with surprising force. ‘More cherry brandy?’

‘I’m kind of full up, thanks, Beryl.’

‘That’s not quite what I meant, dear.’

‘I beg your pardon.’ Alban reached to the drinks trolley sitting between him and Beryl. ‘Allow me.’

‘Oh, thank you. Not too - oh never mind, eh?’

Great-Aunt Doris took a moment or two longer to get, or possibly remember, the joke, but then laughed quite loudly, too. Her head didn’t go quite so far back. A few little flecks of spittle danced like fireflies under the lights, all of which, like most of the lights and lamps in the house, were covered by thin scarves and gauzy pieces of material. The dining room was tall, bay-windowed and panelled in what Alban was fairly sure was mahogany. Long lilac curtains festooned themselves over the windows and pooled on the teak floor. Only the white cube of a new-looking and fully-plumbed-in Bosch dishwasher, sitting to one side of the attractively tiled fireplace, rather jarred.

Both Alban and Fielding had stared at it when they’d first walked in.

‘Saves all that traipsing,’ Great-Aunt Beryl had explained.

The two old ladies had dressed in ancient formal evening wear - long, high-necked silky dresses - and opened up their dusty dining room for the occasion, even though the two men had no clothing quite so formal. Fielding had a dark grey business suit, which he duly wore, but the best Alban could do was put on a clean, if unironed, white shirt with his most recently washed jeans.

Dinner itself was a Chinese takeaway, delivered by an amiable young man named Shing who was on first-name terms with Beryl and Doris. The dining table rather outshone the takeaway containers and the ladies confessed that the crockery was only their second best (certain takeaway foods were liable to contain ingredients which might stain the finer plates); however the champagne and wine, selected by Fielding from an old scullery which now served as a wine cellar, had been - save for one lamentably corked bottle of La Mission Haut-Brion 1950 - very good indeed.

‘So, Fielding,’ said Great-Aunt Doris, addressing Alban.

‘It’s Alban, dear,’ Beryl informed her. She glanced at Alban and shook her head. Fielding wasn’t even in the room at that point.

‘Of course,’ Doris said, waving one hand imperiously. She was a little more robustly made than Beryl - a sparrow to her wren - but still gave an impression of delicacy and even frailty compared to Beryl’s aura of air-dried toughness. Doris wore a similar hat to Beryl, though her feathers were crimson and her wig was platinum blonde. She wore alarming horn-rimmed glasses she called her Dame Ednas. ‘So, Alban,’ she said, ‘are you well?’