Banks, Iain M - Espedair Street

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SYNOPSIS

Two days ago I decided to kill myself... Last night I changed my mind and decided to stay alive.

Everything that follows is...just to try and explain.

Daniel Weir used to be a famous - not to say infamous - rock star. Maybe still is. At thirty-one he has

been both a brilliant failure and a dull success. He's made a lot of mistakes that have paid off and a lot of

smart moves he'll regret forever (However long that turns out to be.) Daniel Weir has gone from rags to

riches and back, and managed to hold on to them both, though not to much else. His friends all seem to be

dead, fed up with him or just disgusted - and who can blame them? And now Daniel Weir is all alone. As

he contemplates his life, Daniel realizes he has only two problems: the past and the future. He knows how

bad the past has been. But the future - well, the future is something else.

'The great white hope of contemporary British literature' Fay Weldon

'Engagingly told, cleverly constructed' Time Out

'Glittering pockets of wit...Banks is undoubtedly a natural' The Independent

'The most imaginative British novelist of his generation' The Times

ESPEDAIR STREET

ONE

Two days ago I decided to kill myself. I would walk and hitch and sail away from this dark city to the

bright spaces of the wet west coast, and there throw myself into the tall, glittering seas beyond Iona (with

its cargo of mouldering kings) to let the gulls and seals and tides have their way with my remains, and in

my dying moments look forward to an encounter with Staffa's six-sided columns and Fingal's cave; or I

might head south to Corryvrecken, to be spun inside the whirlpool and listen with my waterlogged deaf

ears to its mile-wide voice ringing over the wave-race; or be borne north, to where the white sands sing

and coral hides, pink-fingered and hard-soft, beneath the ocean swell, and the rampart cliffs climb

thousand-foot above the seething acres of milky foam, rainbow-buttressed.

Last night I changed my mind and decided to stay alive. Everything that follows is... just to try and

explain.

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Memories first. It all begins with memories, the way most things do. First: making a cloud.

Inez and I made a cloud once. Seriously; a cloud, a real honest-to-goodness cloud up in the big blue sky. I

was happy then, and doing something like creating a cloud just filled me with delight and awe and a

delicious, frightening feeling of power and tininess together; after it happened I laughed and hugged Inez

and we danced in the cinders and kicked up the black smoking debris which scorched our ankles while we

jigged and swirled, choking, eyes watering, laughing and pointing at the vast thing we'd made, as it

gradually drifted away from us.

The sooty lengths of straw smudged our jeans and shirts and faces; we made each other up as

commandos, painting dry streaks on the other's brows and cheeks and nose. The smell clung to our hair

and stayed under our nails and up our noses after we changed and only washed quickly , did not shower,

and at dinner with her parents we kept glancing and remembering and grinning at each other, and when as

usual I crept along to her room that night just as usually feeling foolish; if my fans could see me now;

tiptoeing like some scared kid - the smoke smell was in her hair and on her pillow and the taste of it on

her skin.

Now, making a cloud would doubtless depress me. Something to block the sun, cast a pall, rain soot, rain

rain, and cast a shadow...

That was... long ago. We'd just finished working on Night Shines Darkly, or maybe it was Gauche; I can't

remember. Inez always kept a diary and I used to ask her things about the past sometimes, but I grew too

used to that, and now... now I'm sort of lost without her to tell me what happened when. Maybe it was '76.

Whenever. I was there that summer. End of summer... September? Is that when they harvest? I'm a city

boy so I'm not sure; a country lad would know.

Her parents were farmers, in Hampshire; Winchester was the nearest big town. I only remember that

because I kept humming 'Winchester Cathedral' all the time, which was pretty ancient even then, and

annoyed me almost as much as it annoyed Inez. The harvest had just been gathered and the fields shorn

and the stubble lay about in long raggedy lines (Blonde on Blonde, I remember thinking), and crows flew

about, twirling and dipping and bouncing when they landed, and strutting and jabbing at the hard dry

ground. Inez's dad usually burned off the stubble by dragging a petrol-soaked rag behind his tractor, but

Inez asked if she and I could do it that day, on the top field, because the wind was right and anyway it

wasn't near a road.

So we walked sweating through the fields on a beautiful bright day; the fields were either crew-cut, still

waiting to be set alight, or burned black-flat, so that from above the whole countryside must have looked

like some haphazard, anarchic chessboard. We sweated up the hill with rags and jerrican, past a rusty old

half-fallen building, all corrugated decrepitude, through a copse of tall trees (for the shade) and then to the

field, where the passing shadows of small clouds moved slowly.

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And we set fire to the stubble. Soaked the rags with gasoline and then dragged them on lengths of rope

and chain down two sides of the huge square field, until the fire had caught in a pair of long crackling

lines, and the bright orange flames surged through the dry straw, rolling yellow-red inside the dark grey

bank of smoke while we stood, breathless, wiping sweat from our brows, kicking dust-dry clods of earth

over the guttering flames of the rags we'd towed.

The blaze moved over the field, leaping down the rows of desiccated stalks and flinging them burned or

burning to the sky; flames flicked curling against the wall of grey smoke like broad whips, leaving the

scorched ground smoking greyly, tiny clumps still burning, miniature whirlwinds dancing madly while

the wall of fire crackled and flowed and leapt beyond. Smoke flooded the sky, brown against the blue; it

made a shining copper coin of the sun. I remember shouting, running down the side of the field, to keep

pace, to see, to be part of it. Inez followed, striding down that smoky margin, arms crossed, face

gleaming, watching me.

The piled stubble burned quickly, and the fierceness of the blaze made me squint; the heat of the flames

hurt my eyes, and the smoke when it swirled, backing up momentarily, filled my nose and mouth and

made me cough. Rabbits ran away from the wave of fire, white tails bobbing into the wood; fieldmice

scampered for ditches, and the crows circled away and swooped for the tree tops, croaking distantly over

the sizzling voice of the fire.

When the flames began to die, reaching the barren edges of the field, Inez looked up, and there was our

cloud; a thunderhead of white crowned the vast fist of grey-brown smoke we'd sent up. It towered over us,

slowly drifting away with the rest of the puffy white clouds, its white-capped head plain and perfect above

the lumpy stalk of swirling brown smoke. I was amazed; I just stood and stared, mouth open.

I thought even then it looked like a mushroom; it was an apt description, and as the cloud and the last of

the smoke drifted off, casting its shadow over a village in the next valley, you couldn't help but make the

obvious comparisons... but it was beautiful; and it hadn't hurt anybody, it was part of the way country life

was run, part of the seasons' cycle, glorious and sublime.

Normally, I'm sure I'd have thought there must be some way of using the experience; there had to be an

idea, a song in there somewhere... but I didn't, maybe because we'd just finished the album and I was sick

of songs, especially my own, and this whole rustic thing was supposed to be a complete holiday from

work. Can't fool the old subconscious, though; if it sees a fast buck to be made out of something that's

happened, it'll use it, whether you like it or not, and - much later - I realised that that was just what had

happened.

One of the ideas for the 1980 world tour came from that sight, that day, I'm sure. We called it the Great

Contra-flow Smoke Curtain. It cost a fortune to get right and ages to set up, and it was only because I was

so insistent that we persevered with it; nobody else thought it was worth the trouble. Big Sam, our

manager (and, for a manager, remarkably close to being human), couldn't see past the columns of figures,

never mind the columns of smoke; total apoplexy; just couldn't understand my reasoning, but there was

nothing he could do except shout, and I have a gift for listening quietly regardless of the incoming

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decibels. Listening quietly, but not at the right time.

Story of my life, or a sub-plot at least. Either I know I ought to do something but I just don't get round to

it, or I keep hammering away furiously at something I end up profoundly regretting later. The Great

Contra-flow Smoke Curtain was an instance of the latter. We got the damn thing to work eventually, but I

wish we hadn't. I wish I'd listened, and I'll blame myself to the end of my days for being so determined to

impose my own will on the others. I didn't know what was going to happen, I couldn't have guessed the

eventual, awful, result of my expensive pig-headedness, and nobody ever said they held me responsible,

but... The point here is, however, that the cloud Inez and I made was used; money was made out of it.

Exploitation will out. It has its own survival instinct.

Now that's something Big Sam would have understood.

There you are, though; story of a day in the country. If anything like that happened now, the comparison,

the accidental creation of the image of our deathcap threat, would upset me, plunge me into some crushed

state of absolute dejection, reflecting that no matter what I did, regardless of my actions and whatever

good intent lay behind them, emblems of chaos and destruction dogged me; my personal shades.

But not then. It was different then. Everything was different then. I was happy.

And, God almighty, it all seemed so easy; the living, the playing, the songs:

Why do you bite me on the shoulder,

Why do you scratch me on my back?

Why do you always have to make love

Like you're making an attack?

Liza-bet, do you love me?

I asked her one fine morning

Yes indeed I do said she

And loved me without warning

I am old, my thoughts get blown like ash

By the winds of grief and pain,

Young minds only do not fear such blasts,

Which but serve to fan the flame.

Three of the better examples there. Bits I'm almost proud of. I could have chosen... but no, I'm too

embarrassed. I still have some pride left.

And now there's a new song, anyway. Something else to work on, after so long. I need a few new words,

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but the beat and the music are already there, a framework; a skeleton.

A new song. Is this a good sign or a bad one? Wish I knew. Never mind the consequences, just get on

with the work. Try not to think about the past twenty-four hours or the last week, because they've been too

fraught and traumatic and ridiculous; pay attention to the song, instead, play to your strengths, such as

they are.

I thought this must be the end... Well, it's not.

Jeez, what a day. From the brink of likely death to genuine financial suicide; not to mention an insane and

doubtless doomed new scheme, a last crazy chance to grasp whatever the hell it is I really want; happiness

maybe, absolution certainly.

I'd love to put everything into the one song, to sing a song of birds and dogs and mermaids,

hammerheaded friends and bad news from far away (again, like confirmation, like a lesson, like

vengeance), a song of supermarket trolleys and seaplanes, falling leaves and power stations, fatal

connections and live performances, fans that spin and fans that crush... but I know too well I can't. Stick

to the one song, verse and chorus, sing the music, tap the beat, fit the words in... and call it 'Espedair

Street'.

That's what it's called. I know what the ending of the song is but I don't know how this ends. I know (I

think) what the song means... but I still don't know what this means. Maybe nothing. Maybe neither is

meant to mean anything; this is always a possibility. Nothing always is.

Three-twenty in the morning according to the watch I bought this afternoon. My eyes are sore and gritty-

feeling. The city sleeps on. Maybe I should make more coffee. Funny how quiet Glasgow gets at this time

in the morning. I can hear, quite distinctly, the engine of a truck on the motorway, its engine echoing in

the concrete trench, then fading under the bridges and tunnels, finally sounding distant and small as it

reaches the Kingston Bridge and arcs over the Clyde, heading south and west.

Three twenty-one, if the watch is right. That means two and a half hours to wait. Can I bear that? I

suppose I have to. I've borne the waiting so far. Two and a half hours... five minutes to get ready, then...

how long to the station? Can't be more than fifteen minutes. Total of twenty minutes. Call it half an hour.

That leaves only two hours to wait. Or I could leave even earlier and spend more time in the station.

Might be a café open, or a hamburger van in George Square (though I'm still too nervous to be hungry). I

could just go for a walk, waste time wandering through the cold streets kicking at the litter, but I don't feel

like that. I want to sit here in my preposterous stone tower looking over the city, thinking about the past

twelve years and the last week and the day just gone, then I want to get up and go and maybe never come

back. Three twenty-two and a bit. Doesn't time go quickly when you're having fun?

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Where is that train now? Two and a half hours away; or less ... yes, less. Two hours and a bit; Carlisle? A

bit further south maybe; still in England definitely. Perhaps hauling itself up to Shap Summit, through the

thin drifts of starlit snow, hauling its load of rocking, sleeping passengers northwards. If it comes that

way; I didn't ask about that when I went to the station. Maybe it comes up the east coast route, stopping at

Edinburgh before heading west. Damn, I should have checked; it seems very important to know now. I

need something to keep me occupied.

Three twenty-three! Is that all? Doesn't time - no, I've already said that, thought that. I sit and watch the

seconds change on the watch. I used to have a limited edition Rolex worth the price of a new car but I lost

it. It was a present from... Christine? No, Inez. She got fed up with me always having to ask other people

what the time was; embarrassed on my behalf.

I grew up - I ended grown-up lacking so many of the standard props; a watch, a wallet, a diary, a driving

licence, a chequebook ... and not just the props, not just the hardware, but the brain-implanted software to

make use of them, so that even when I did end up with all that gear I never really felt it was part of me.

Even after Inez bought me the Rolex I'd wander up to roadies and ask them how long we had to the start

of the gig. The record company gave me a Gucci wallet, but I'd still stuff pounds and fivers into various

pockets - I'd even cram them into the pocket where I'd put my wallet, absently wondering why it was so

difficult to squeeze the crumpled bits of paper in there.

Hopeless. Just a hopeless case; always have been.

Inez kept a diary for me because I never could; I always started faithfully every second of January (I think

Scots require some sort of special dispensation to admit to doing anything organised on the first of

January), but by the second week I always found that - somehow, quite unaccountably - I'd already missed

out several days. Those blank spaces, accusatory, filled me with a nervous dread; my memory instantly

locked up; I could never remember what had happened during the missing days, and felt too ashamed to

ask anybody else. The easiest thing was to throw the embarrassing diary away. I still don't have a driving

licence, and I kept losing chequebooks ... nowadays I stick to cash and plastic money which, if you're

sufficiently well off, is wonderful.

Always hated telephones, too. Don't have one in the house (not that you'd call this a house, but never

mind). If I had a phone I could call up Queen Street station, to find out what route the train takes, and

where it is now. But I don't have a telephone and I can't be bothered looking for an undamaged public

phonebox. No television either. I am screenless. They have that Ceefax or Prestel or whatever they call it,

these days. I might be able to find out from that where the sleeper train from Euston is now.

Oh, God, what am I doing? Do I know what I'm doing? I don't think I do. I don't think I'd be asking

myself this now if I did know what I'm doing. Not that this confusion is my fault, really it isn't; just a

troubadour with a very limited attention span; a technician in the machine where the industry standard is

the three or four minute single (single, you'll notice; as in track, as in mind. Of course, if you'd prefer a

three record set concept album...). Hell, I never claimed to be an intellectual, I never even thought I was

clever. Not for long, anyway. I just knew what I was good at and how good I was compared to everybody

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else, and that I was going to make it. Oh, the ambition was there, but it was a helpless, stupid sort of

ambition; blinkered.

Talent. That's what I had, all I had; some talent... And even a small amount of talent can go an appallingly

long way, these days. I'd love to claim there was more to it, but I can't. Being honest with myself, I know I

was never... driven enough to be more than just talented and lucky. I didn't have to do what I did, I just

wanted to, a lot. If they'd said I couldn't ever write a note of music or a word of lyric for the rest of my

life, but there was a secure job waiting for me in computing, or (to be more realistic) a distillery, then I

wouldn't have minded that much. And everything would have been a hell of a lot simpler.

So I tell myself, now.

Three twenty-five and a quarter. Dear God, it's slowing down. Check out the surroundings. A mostly clear

sky; sharp little stars and a sliver of moOn.

Silence in the city and no one to talk to.

A car drones down St Vincent Street, stops at the Newton Street traffic lights, idling in the mixture of

darkness and yellow sodium-vapour light. Its exhaust curls, the left indicator winks. The trough of the

buried motorway, cut through the city like a deep scar, lies beyond, on the far side of the lights, beneath

the St Vincent Street flyover. No traffic on the motorway. Little green men become little red men; the

main lights change, the car moves off, quiet and alone.

Wish I could drive. I always meant to learn but - like a lot of things in my life - I never got round to it, and

went too quickly from not being able to afford a car at all to having a chauffeuse for my Panther de Ville,

and seriously thinking about going straight from pedestrianism to learning how to fly (a helicopter). Well,

I never got around to that either.

Crazy Davey; he did all that. He had the fast cars and big bikes and the planes, and the mansion. And he

was crazy.

I may be stupid but I'm not - I never was - crazy.

I left that to Balfour. Our Davey collected dangerously insane things to do. Like the Three Chimneys tour;

a case in point. Mad bastard nearly killed me, and not for the first time. That was one of his more dramatic

escapades. Made what eventually happened even more ironic. And hard to bear.

But then a lot of it seems hard to bear, at the time. You get good at it, though, with sufficient practice and

the right attitude.

And Christine, shall I probe that wound? Angel, I thought when I first saw you, heard you. That mouth,

those lips, the voice of silk and gold; I lost you too, I threw you away, turned my back and condemned

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you, worshipper from the first, Judas to the last.

I always knew it would amount to nothing. Somehow I expected that. Right from the start I accepted I

was a misfit and I'd never really be comfortable anywhere, with anyone. I just decided that if that was the

case then I might as well try to be as successful a misfit as possible, make as big a noise about it as I

could; give the bastards a run for their money. I suppose every society has its escape routes, ways the not-

normal can be themselves without hurting those around them, and (more importantly) without harming

the fabric of that society. I was lucky that the time I was born into actually heaped riches on misfits who

could more or less behave themselves... providing they had something to offer in return, of course.

Ah, Jesus... Davey, Christine, Inez, Jean... all of you; what did you see when you looked at me? Did I look

as stupid and awkward to you as I looked to myself? Worse, maybe. Deep down I never did give a damn

what other people thought of me, but somehow I still worried like hell about it. I never expected to be

loved, but I never wanted to hurt anybody either and that meant trying to be nice and generous and kind

and supportive and generally behaving as though I was desperate to be loved, and for myself, not for my

work.

Here I am, one of the few people awake in Glasgow, sitting in Mr Wykes' absurd, blasphemous tower,

looking out over a churchyard that is not a churchyard, full of gravestones that are not gravestones, staring

at the sky and the ever-changing traffic lights that tick and change and cycle through their simple

programme regardless of an audience or cars or anything else short of a power failure, and I'm waiting for

a certain train and thinking about - very possibly - doing something really stupid.

Anna Karenina?

No. Though I may well go west.

My hands are shaking. I'd kill for a cigarette. Not a person, of course; I wouldn't kill a human for a

cigarette. I'd kill... a minor plant maybe, or a flatworm perhaps; nothing with a proper central nervous

system... no, come to think of it, I'd kill a woodlouse for a cigarette (not that many woodlice carry fags),

but that's only because I hate the horrible little crawling bastards. Inez said that she always used to stamp

on them too, but then one day she started to think of them as baby armadillos and found she could suffer

them to live.

Baby armadillos; good grief.

Gave up smoking years ago but I'd love a fag now; maybe I should go out; find an all night petrol station

and buy a packet of straights.

No; this is just nervousness. I suffer terrible guilt pangs after smoking. Better not to. God, I'd like a drink,

though. That's a lot more tricky. Drink. Drink drink drink. Trying to keep my mind off it, trying to keep

my hands off it. I have the continual temptation of knowing there are several dozen large wooden crates

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stacked on the ground floor here and crammed with drink; red and blue label Stolichnaya, Polish vodka,

Hungarian brandy, white and red Georgian sparkling wine (méthode champenoise), real Budweiser and

East German schnapps. Cases of the stuff; gallons and gallons of commie booze; sufficient alcohol to

provide a lethal dose for every stockbroker, judge and priest in Glasgow; a small swimming pool's worth

of genuine Red Death. The ground floor of Mr Wykes' Folly - my home - also holds a Yugoslavian

dumper truck, a Russian tractor and a Czechoslovak bulldozer, not to mention a quantity of other Eastern

Bloc products sufficient to fill a small and probably rather unexciting department store.

There is a perfectly logical reason for me having all this.

... More words for the song. I scribble them down on the back of another man's card, like a thank you for

information received. Just please let that news be true, let it not be false or wrong or incomplete. Let it be

right if the song is right, and I'll try my hardest, honest.

Scribble scribble. There.

Another time-check. Three-thirty; thank goodness. An hour and fifty minutes left. Time to think clearly,

time to review, reconsider.

Let's try and get all this into some sort of perspective; let's put it in context, shall we? Order it.

My name is WEIRD, my name is Dan or Danny or Daniel, my name is Frank X, Gerald Hlasgow, James

Hay. I am thirty-one years old and old before my time and still just a daft wee boay; I am a brilliant

failure and a dull success, I could buy a nearly-new Boeing 747 for cash if I wanted to but I don't own an

intact pair of socks. I've made a lot of mistakes that paid off and a lot of smart moves that I'll regret

forever. My friends all seem to be dead, fed up with me or just disgusted and on the whole I can't blame

them; I'm an unholy innocent and wholly guilty.

So come on down, roll up, come along, come in, sit down and shut up, calm down and listen up... join me

now (hey gang, let's do the show right here!) ... join me now as we journey into the past down the teeming

thoroughfare that is... (you guessed)

TWO

Frozen Gold: I hated that name right from the start, but I was so damn sure of myself I was perfectly

confident I'd persuade them to change it.

Wrong.

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A wet Tuesday in November, in Paisley, in 1973. I was seventeen; I'd left school a year earlier and started

work at Dinwoodie and Sons, a light engineering works carrying out component work for the big Chrysler

car plant at Linwood (the Chrysler factory had been a Rootes factory, would later become a Talbot

factory, and finally end up a Closed factory; a car plant that withered).

I spent most of my time collecting swarf from around the lathes, making up songs in my head and going

to the toilet. In the toilet I smoked, read the papers and wanked. I was bursting with youth then; seething

with semen and pus and ideas; bursting spots, pulling myself off, scribbling down tunes and words anq

bad poetry, trying every form of dandruff control known to Man save cutting all my hair off, and

wondering what it was like to get laid.

And feeling guilty. Never forget the feeling guilty; the constant bass line to my life. It was one of the first

things I was ever aware of (I don't know what I'd done; peed on the carpet, thrown up over my da, hit one

of my sisters, sworn ... doesn't matter. The crime, the misdeed, is the least important part of it; what

counts is the guilt). 'You bad, bad boy!' 'You wicked child!' 'Ye wee bugger ye!' (skelp) ... Jesus, I took it

all in, it was my most formative experience; it was part of the fabric of reality; it was the most natural

thing in the world, the principal example of cause and effect; you did something, you felt guilty. Simple

as that. To live was to feel, 'Oh, God! What have I done?' ...

Guilt. The big G, the Catholic faith's greatest gift to humankind and its subspecies, psychiatrists... well, I

guess that's putting it a little too harshly; I've met a lot of Jews and they seem to have just as hard a time

of it as we do, and they've been around longer, so maybe it wasn't the Church's invention... but I maintain

it developed the concept more fully than anybody else; it was the Japan of guilt, taking somebody else's

crude, unsophisticated, unreliable product and mass-producing it, refining it, finetuning it, optimising its

performance and giving it a life-time guarantee.

Some people get away from it; they honestly seem to just shuck guilt off like a backpack as soon as they

leave home; I couldn't. I took it all too seriously, from the start. I believed. I knew they were right; my

ma, the priest, my teachers; I was a sinner, I was dirty and soiled and horrible and it was going to be a full

time job saving me from the fires and the torment; real professional work was going to be needed to

rescue me from the eternal damnation I felt forced to agree I so thoroughly deserved.

Original sin was a revelation to me, once I understood it properly. At last, I realised, it wasn't necessary to

have actually done something to feel guilty; this dreadful, constant, nagging sensation of wracked

responsibility could be accounted for just by being alive. There was a logical explanation! Hot damn. It

was a relief, I can tell you.

So I felt guilty, even after I'd left school, even after I'd stopped going to church (oh, Jesus, especially just

after stopping going to church), and even after I'd left home and started sharing a flat with three atheist

prod students. I felt guilty about having left school and not going to university or college, guilty about not

going to church, guilty about leaving home and leaving my ma to cope with the others alone, guilty about

smoking, guilty about wanking, guilty about skidging off to the bog all the time and reading my

newspaper. I felt guilty about not believing in guilt any more.

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