Whit

by Iain Banks

  We were in the Warristons' sitting room, in their bungalow across the river from the cathedral. The window looked out over the back garden where Mrs Warriston was hanging up the washing; the cathedral tower was visible over the spring-fresh greenery of the trees around the hidden railway line and river. I sat on a hard wooden chair Mr W had brought in from the kitchen for me while he lounged in a recliner (soft furnishings are forbidden us). This was only the third time in as many months I had visited the Warriston household, though I had been invited to do so that first day I played for Mr W, and often enough thereafter.

  Mr Warriston looked thoughtful. 'It sounded rather… Vivaldi-ish at the start, I thought.'

  'He was a priest, wasn't he?'

  'He took orders originally, I think, yes.'

  'Good.'

  'Have you heard his Four Seasons?' Mr W asked. 'I could put on the CD.'

  I hesitated. Really, I ought not listen to something as sophisticated as a CD player; my Grandfather's teachings were clear on the matter of the unacceptability of such media. A clockwork gramophone was just about acceptable if one plays serious or religious music on it, but even a radio is considered unholy (for general or entertainment use, at least; we did keep an ancient valve set for the purposes of Radiomancy, and for years after the move from Luskentyre the two branches of the Order kept in touch by shortwave radio).

  While I was dithering, Mr Warriston got up, saying, 'Let me play it for you…' and moved to the stacked black mass of the hi-fi equipment, squatting looking compact and complicated on a set of drawers in one corner of the room. He opened a drawer underneath the dark machine and took out a plastic case. I watched, engrossed, even though at the same time I realised I was clenching my teeth, uncomfortable in the presence of such technology.

  A sudden noise in the hall made me jump. My cup rattled in its saucer.

  Mr Warriston turned and smiled. 'It's only the phone, Is,' he said kindly.

  'I know!' I said quickly, frowning.

  'Excuse me a moment,' Mr W went out to the hall, putting the plastic CD case down on top of the player unit.

  I was annoyed with myself because I had blushed. I know with every fibre of my being I am the Elect of God but I feel and act like a confused child sometimes when confronted by even the simplest tricks of the modern world. Still; such instances inspire humility, I told myself again. I nibbled on the digestive biscuit that had accompanied my tea cup on its saucer and looked around the room.

  There is an inevitable fascination for the Saved in the trappings those we call the Blands (amongst other things, though in any event, hardly ever to their faces) surround themselves with. Here was a room with immaculately bright wallpaper, voluminous, billowy furniture that appeared capable of swallowing you up, a carpet that looked as though it was poured throughout the house - it extended with apparent seamlessness into the hall and bathroom and stopped only at the doorway to the tiled, spotlessly clean kitchen - and a single huge long window made from two vast sheets of glass, which reduced the sound of a passing train to a distant whisper when outside it sounded like shrieking thunder. The whole house smelted clean and medicinal and synthetic. I could detect what might have been deodorant, aftershave, perfume or just washing-powder fumes.(Most Blands smell antiseptic or flowery to us; we are happy to indulge Salvador and his tub on account of his age and holy seniority, but there is simply not enough water - hot or cold - for each of the rest of us to bathe more often than once a week or so. Often when we do get our turn it is only a stand-up bath, and we are anyway discouraged from using perfumes and scented soaps. As a result of such strictures and limitations and the fact that many of us do heavy manual work in clothes we cannot change or wash every day, we tend to smell more of ourselves than of anything else, a fact which the occasional Bland has been known to comment on. Obviously, I myself am not expected to undertake much menial labour, but even so I try to make sure I have my big wash on a Sunday evening, before I walk in to Dunblane and meet Mr Warriston.)

  Plus, there is electricity.

  I glanced towards the hall, then leaned across to the small table beside Mrs Warriston's armchair, where there was a pile of hardback books and a reading lamp. I found the lamp's switch; the light clicked on; just like that. And off again.

  I shivered, ashamed at myself for being so childish. But it taught one a lesson; it showed how even the simplest manifestation of such technology could distract a person; beguile them, fill their head up with clutter and an obsession with fripperies, drowning out the thin, quiet voice that is all we can hear of God. I looked furtively towards the hall again. Mr Warriston was still talking. I put down my cup and went to inspect the CD.

  The case was disappointing, but the rainbow-silver disc inside looked interesting.

  'Wonderful little things, aren't they?' Mr W said, coming back into the room.

  I nodded, gingerly handing the disc to him. It occurred to me to ask Mr Warriston whether he owned any CDs by my cousin Morag, the internationally acclaimed baryton soloist, but to have done so might have seemed like vicarious boasting, so I resisted that temptation.

  'Amazing they manage to squeeze seventy minutes of music onto them,' he continued, bending to the hi-fi device. He switched it on and all sorts of lights came on; sharp points of bright red, green and yellow and whole softly lit fawn windows with sharp black lettering displayed in them. He pressed a button and a little drawer slid out of the machine. He put the disc inside, pressed the button again and the tray glided back in again 'Of course, some people say they sound sterile, but I think they-'

  'Do you have to turn them over, like records?' I asked.

  'What? No,' Mr Warriston said, straightening. He pressed another button and the music burst out suddenly on both sides of us. 'No, you only play one side.'

  'Why?' I asked him.

  He looked nonplussed, and then thoughtful. 'You know,' he said, 'I've no idea. I don't see why you couldn't make both sides playable and double the capacity…' He stared down at the machine. 'You could have two lasers, or just turn it over by hand… hmm.' He smiled at me. 'I might write to one of those Notes and Queries features about that. Yes, good point.' He nodded over at my wooden chair. 'Anyway. Come on; let's get you sitting in the best place for the stereo effect, eh?'

  I smiled, pleased to have thought of a technical question Mr Warriston could not answer.

  * * *

  I listened to the CD then thanked Mr and Mrs Warriston for their hospitality, declined both lunch and a lift home in their car and set off back the way I had come. The day was warm and the clouds small and high in a luminously blue sky; near a small meadow by the side of Allan Water, I sat on a soft bank in leaf-dappled sunlight and ate the apple and the haggis pakora Sister Anne had thought to furnish me with earlier.

  The broad river gurgled over its smooth rocky slabs, sparkling under my feet; a train clattered unseen on the far bank, hidden by the trees. I folded the pakora's greaseproof paper back into my pocket, went down to the river and drank some water from my cupped hands; it was clear and cool.

  I was shaking my hands free of the droplets and looking round with an exultant heart, thinking how beautiful God had made so much of the world, when I recalled that this was the spot where, two years ago, some sad Unsaved had dragged me from the path and into the bushes.

  His hand over my mouth had smelled of chip-fat and his breath stank of cigarettes.

  It had taken a moment or two for my poor slow brain to register the fact that - in the words of Grandmother Yolanda - This Is Not A Drill.

  Appropriately, of course, it was also Grandmother Yolanda who had organised those self-defence classes which had left me with (to adopt Yolanda's words again) the chance to set the agenda for my encounter with this scumbag.

  I had waited until he'd stopped hauling me backwards and I found my footing (I think he tried to throw me down, but I was holding tightly onto his arm with both my hands), then I'd raked my foot smartly down his nearest shin - and was than
kful for my heavy, farm-sensible boots - and stamped down on his instep with all my might and weight; I was surprised at how loud the snap was.

  He dropped me and screamed; I did not even have to use the six-inch hat-pin which Yolanda herself had presented me with and which I carried in the lapel seam of my travelling jacket, only its little jet-beaded head showing.

  The man lay curled up on the shaded brown earth; a skinny fellow with longish black hair, a shiny, synthetic black jacket sporting two white stripes, faded blue jeans and muddy black training shoes. He was clutching his foot and sobbing obscenities.

  To my shame, I did not stay and try to reason with him; I did not tell him that for all his weakness and wickedness God still treasured him and - if he only chose to look for it - there was an intense, enhancing and unending love to be found in the adoration of the Divinity which would assuredly be infinitely more satisfying than some short physical spasm of pleasure, especially one achieved through the coercion and subjugation of a fellow human being and so entirely lacking in the glory of Love. Indeed what I thought of doing at the time was kicking his head very violently several times with my heavy, sensible boots while he lay there helpless on the ground. What I actually did was search for my hat (while keeping one eye on him as he crawled away, whimpering, further into the bushes) and then having found it and dusted it off, go down to the sunlit river and wash my face to get rid of the smell of chip fat and stale cigarette smoke.

  'I shall tell the police!' I shouted loudly towards the wind-loud trees, from the path.

  I did not, however, and so was left with a nagging feeling of guilt on several counts.

  Well, that is water under the bridge, as they say, and I can only hope that the poor man attacked nobody else and found an un-depraved outlet for his love in the worship of our Maker.

  I completed drying my hands on my jacket, and continued on my way.

  * * *

  I arrived back in High Easter Offerance to find disturbance and alarums, a disaster in the making and a War Council in progress.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The next morning, while the dawn was still just a grey presence in the quiet mists above, I splashed into the waters of the river just downstream from the iron bridge, my feet squelching through the chill mud under the brown water. On the steep bank above, under the sombre canopy of the drooping trees, in a silent, massed presence, stood almost every adult of our Community.

  I heaved myself up and into my rubber coracle while Sister Angela steadied the dark craft. Brother Robert handed her the old brown kit-bag from the shore and she passed it on to me; I placed it in my lap. My boots were hung round my neck on tied laces, my hat was slung over my back.

  Brother Robert slid into the water too; he held my little boat and passed the trenching tool to Sister Angela, who delivered it into my hands; I unfolded it and locked the blade into place while she used the cold river water to clean my feet - which stuck out over the edge of the giant inner-tube - and then dried them slowly and reverently with a towel.

  I looked up at the others, standing watching on the shore, their collective breath hanging in a cloud above their heads. Grandfather Salvador was in the midst of them, a white-robed focus within their darkly sober penumbra.

  Sister Angela was passed my socks, which she carefully put on my feet. I gave her my boots and she laced those up too.

  'Ready, my child?' our Founder said quietly from the shore.

  'I am,' I said.

  Sister Angela and Brother Robert were looking round at my Grandfather; he nodded, and they pushed me firmly away from the bank and out towards the centre of the river. 'Go with God!' Sister Angela whispered. Brother Robert nodded. The current caught my odd craft and started to turn it and draw me away downstream. I dipped the trenching tool into the silky grey waters, paddling to keep my Brothers and Sisters in view.

  'Go with God - with God - Go - God - Go with - God - with God - God - with - Go…' the others whispered, their mingled voices already half lost in the river's gurglings and the lowing of distant, awakening cattle.

  Finally, just before the river bore me around the tight bend downstream and out of sight, I saw Grandfather Salvador raise his arm and heard his voice boom out over all the others; 'Go with God, Isis.'

  Then the inner-tube entered an eddy and I was spun around, the world whirling about me. I paddled on the other side and looked back, but the river had swept me away from them, and all I could see were the reeds and bushes and the tall black trees, hanging over towards each other from each bank of the mist-wreathed river like monstrous, groping hands.

  I set my mouth in a tight line and paddled away downstream, heading for the sea and the city of Edinburgh, where my mission would take me first to the home of Gertie Fossil.

  * * *

  'What?' I asked, appalled.

  'Your cousin Morag,' Grandfather Salvador told me, 'has written from England to say that not only is she not returning for the Festival at the end of the month, but she has found what she calls a Truer Way to God. She has sent back our latest monthly grant to her.'

  'But that's terrible!' I cried. 'What false faith can have poisoned her mind?'

  'We don't know,' Salvador snapped.

  We were in the Community office across the mansion landing from Salvador's quarters; my Grandfather, my step-aunt Astar, Allan Sister Erin, Sister Jess and I. I had just returned from Dunblane; I still held my travelling hat. I had been crossing the boundary back into our lands when I saw Brother Vitus running towards me along the old railway track; he stood, breathless, telling me I was required urgently at the house, then we ran back together.

  'We must write to her,' I said. 'Explain to her the error of her thoughts. Have any of her previous letters given any hint of the exact nature of her delusion? Is she still living in London? Brother Zebediah is still there, I believe; could he not talk to her? Shall we call a Mass Prayer Session? Perhaps she has lost her copy of the Orthography; shall we send her another?'

  Allan glanced at my Grandfather, then said, 'I think you are missing the point here a little, Is.' He sounded tired.

  'What do you mean?' I asked. I put down my hat and took off my jacket.

  'Sister Morag is important to us in many ways,' Astar said. Astar is forty-three, a year younger than her Sister Calli, and as lightly European looking as Calli is dark. Tall and sensuous, with long, glossy black hair braided to the small of her back and large eyes hooded by dark eyelids, she is the mother of Indra and Hymen. She dresses even more plainly than the rest of us, in long, simple smocks, but still manages to exude elegance and poise. 'She is most dear to all of us,' she said.

  'The point is,' Salvador cut in - Astar's head dipped deferentially and her eyes half closed - 'that while I'm sure we care as much for Sister Morag's soul as for any of our number and so feel the grief of her apostasy most keenly, and would in any event do all we can to bring her back to the fold with all due speed, there is the more immediate result of Morag's desertion, namely, what do we do about the Festival?'

  I hung my jacket on the back of a chair. Salvador was pacing up and down in front of the office's two tall windows; Sister Erin stood by the door near the small desk which supported the Remington typewriter, Allan - arms folded, head slightly bowed, face pale - stood by his desk, which took up a fair proportion of the other end of the room, in front of the fireplace.

  'Beloved Grandfather, if I may… ?' Allan said. Salvador waved him on. 'Isis,' Allan said, spreading his hands, 'the point is, we've made quite a thing of Morag attending the Festival as Guest of Honour; we've been writing to the faithful all over the world encouraging them to come to this Festival, citing Morag's fame and her continuing faith-'

  I was shocked. 'But I didn't know anything of this!' We usually shunned anything that smacked of publicity; one-to-one conversions were more our style (though, in the right circumstances, we'd always felt there was a place for standing on street corners, shouting).

  'Well,' Allan said, looking pa
ined as well as pale. 'It was just an idea we had.' He glanced at Grandfather, who looked away, shaking his head.

  'There was no particular need for you to know at this stage, Beloved Isis,' Erin said, though I wasn't sure she sounded convinced herself.

  'The point is Morag's not coming to the damn Festival,' Salvador said before I could reply. He turned and paced past me. He wore a fresh set of the long creamy woollen robes - from our own flock, naturally - which he wore every day, but on this occasion he looked different somehow; agitated in a way I could not remember him being before.

  Morag - beautiful, graceful, talented Morag - had always been a special favourite of my Grandfather's; I suspected that in a clean fight, as it were, without the special status as the Elect of God conferred upon me by the exact date of my birth, Morag, not I, would be the apple of our Founder's eye. I felt no bitterness or jealousy regarding this; she had been my best friend and she was still, even after all this time, probably now my second-best friend after Sophi Woodbean, and anyway I was as taken with my cousin as my Grandfather was; Morag is a hard woman not to like (we have a few like that in our extended family).

  'When did we find all this out?' I asked.

  'The letter arrived this morning,' Allan said. He nodded at a sheet of paper lying on the age-scuffed green leather surface of his desk.

  I picked up the letter; Morag had been writing home for the last six years, ever since she had moved to London. Until now her letters had been the source of nothing but pride as she became more and more successful, and on the two occasions she had come back to see us since she had seemed like some fabulously exotic, almost alien creature; svelte and groomed and sleek and brimming with an effortless self-confidence.

  I read the letter; it was typed, without corrections, as usual (Allan had told me he half suspected Morag used something called a word processor, which for a long and rather confused time I imagined must do to words what a food processor - a device whose activities I had once witnessed - does to food). Morag's signature was as big and bold as ever. The text itself was terse but then her communications had never been particularly wordy. I noticed she still used 'do'nt' instead of 'don't'. The letterhead address, of her flat in Finchley, had been scored out.