The Wasp Factory

by Iain Banks

  After I’d come to understand evolution and know a little about history and farming, I saw that the thick white animals I laughed at for following each other around and getting caught in bushes were the product of generations of farmers as much as generations of sheep; we made them, we moulded them from the wild, smart survivors that were their ancestors so that they would become docile, frightened, stupid, tasty wool-producers. We didn’t want them to be smart, and to some extent their aggression and their intelligence went together. Of course, the rams are brighter, but even they are demeaned by the idiotic females they have to associate with and inseminate.

  The same principle applies to chickens and cows and almost anything we’ve been able to get our greedy, hungry hands on for long enough. It occasionally occurs to me that something the same might have happened to women but, attractive though the theory might be, I suspect I’m wrong.

  • • •

  Home in time for dinner, I wolfed down my eggs, steak, chips and beans, and spent the rest of the evening watching television and picking bits of dead cow out of my mouth with a match.

  10: Running Dog

  IT ALWAYS annoyed me that Eric went crazy. Although it wasn’t an on-off thing, sane one minute, mad the next, I don’t think there is much doubt that the incident with the smiling child triggered something in Eric that led, almost inevitably, to his fall. Something in him could not accept what had happened, could not fit in what he had seen with the way he thought things ought to be. Maybe some deep part of him, buried under layers of time and growth like the Roman remains of a modern city, still believed in God, and could not suffer the realisation that, if such an unlikely being did exist, it could suffer that to happen to any of the creatures it had supposedly fashioned in its own image.

  Whatever it was that disintegrated in Eric then, it was a weakness, a fundamental flaw that a real man should not have had. Women, I know from watching hundreds – maybe thousands – of films and television programmes, cannot withstand really major things happening to them; they get raped, or their loved one dies, and they go to pieces, go crazy and commit suicide, or just pine away until they die. Of course, I realise that not all of them will react that way, but obviously it’s the rule, and the ones who don’t obey it are in the minority.

  There must be a few strong women, women with more man in their character than most, and I suspect that Eric was the victim of a self with just a little too much of the woman in it. That sensitivity, that desire not to hurt people, that delicate, mindful brilliance – these things were his partly because he thought too much like a woman. Up until his nasty experience it never really bothered him, but just at that moment, in that extremity of circumstance, it was enough to break him.

  I blame my father, not to mention whatever stupid bitch it was threw him over for another man. My father must take the blame in part at least because of that nonsense in Eric’s early years, letting him dress as he wanted and giving him the choice of dresses and trousers; Harmsworth and Morag Stove were quite right to be worried about the way their nephew was being brought up, and did the proper thing in offering to look after him. Everything might have been different if my father hadn’t had those daft ideas, if my mother hadn’t resented Eric, if the Stoves had taken him away earlier; but it happened the way it did, and as such I hope my father blames himself as much as I blame him. I want him to feel the weight of that guilt upon him all the time, and have sleepless nights because of it, and bad dreams that wake him up in a sweat on cool nights once he does get to sleep. He deserves it.

  • • •

  Eric didn’t ring that night after my walk in the hills. I went to bed fairly early, but I know I’d have heard the phone if it had gone, and I slept without a break, tired after my long trek. The next day I was up at the normal time, went out for a walk along the sands in the coolness of the morning, and came back in time for a good big cooked breakfast.

  I felt restless, my father was quieter than usual, and the heat built quickly, making the house very stuffy even with the windows open. I wandered about the rooms, looking out through those opened spaces, leaning on ledges, scouring the land with closed-up eyes. Eventually, with my father dozing in a deckchair, I went to my own room, changed to a T-shirt and my light waistcoat with the pockets, filled them up with useful things, slung my day-pack over one shoulder and set off to have a good look round the approaches to the island, and maybe take in the dump, too, if there weren’t too many flies.

  I put my sunglasses on, and the brown Polaroids made the colours more vivid. I started to sweat as soon as I stepped out of the door. A warm breeze, hardly cooling at all, swirled uncertainly from a few directions, brought smells of grass and flowers. I walked steadily, up the path, over the bridge, down the mainland line of the creek and the stream, following the course of the burn and jumping its small offshoots and tributaries down to the dam-building area. I turned north then, going up the line of the sea-facing dunes, taking them by their sandy summits despite the heat and the exertion of climbing their southern faces, so that I could gain the benefit of the views they offered.

  Everything shimmered in that heat, became uncertain and shifting. The sand was hot when I touched it, and insects of all sorts and sizes buzzed and whirred about me. I waved them away.

  Now and again I used the binoculars, wiping the sweat from my brows and lifting the glasses to my eyes, inspecting the distance through the heat-thick quivering air. My scalp crawled with perspiration, and my crotch itched. I checked the things I had brought with me more often than I usually did, absently weighing the small cloth bag of steelies, touching the Bowie knife and catapult on my belt, making sure I still had my lighter, wallet, comb, mirror, pen and paper. I drank from the small flask of water that I had, though it was warm and tasted stale already.

  I could see some interesting-looking pieces of flotsam and jetsam when I looked over the sands and the lapping sea, but I stayed on the dunes, taking the higher ones when I had to, going far north, over streams and through small marshes, past the Bomb Circle and the place I had never really named, where Esmerelda took off.

  I only thought of them after I had passed them.

  After an hour or so I turned inland, then south, along the last of the mainland dunes, looking out over the scrubby pasture where the sheep moved slow, like maggots, over the land, eating. Once I stood a while and watched a great bird, high up against the unbroken blue, wheeling and spiralling on the thermals, turning this way and that. Below it a few gulls shifted, their wings outstretched and their white necks pointing about as they searched for something. I found a dead frog high on a dune, dried and bloody on its back and stuck with sand, and wondered how it had got up there. Probably dropped by a bird.

  I put on my little green cap eventually, shielding my eyes from the glare. I swung down over the path, level with the island and the house. I kept going, still stopping now and again to use the binoculars. Cars and trucks glinted through the trees, a mile or so away on the road. A helicopter flew over once, most likely heading for one of the rig yards or a pipeline.

  I reached the dump just after noon, coming through some small trees to it. I sat down in the shade of one tree and inspected the place with the glasses. Some gulls were there, but no people. A little smoke drifted up from a fire near its centre, and spread around it was all the debris from the town and its area: cardboard and black plastic bags and the gleaming, battered whiteness of old washing machines, cookers and fridges. Papers picked themselves up and went round in a circle for a minute or so as a tiny whirlwind started, then dropped again.

  I picked my way through the dump, savouring its rotten, slightly sweet smell. I kicked at some of the rubbish, turned a few interesting things over with one booted foot, but could see nothing worthwhile. One of the things I had come to like about the dump over the years was the way that it never stayed the same; it moved like something huge and alive, spreading like an immense amoeba as it absorbed the healthy land and the collective waste. But
this day it looked tired and boring. I felt impatient with it, almost angry. I threw a couple of aerosol cans into the weak fire burning in the middle, but even they provided little diversion, popping effetely inside the pale flames. I left the dump and headed south again.

  Near a small stream about a kilometre from the dump there was a large bungalow, a holiday home looking out over the sea. It was closed up and deserted, and there were no fresh tracks on the bumpy trail leading down to it and past it to the beach. It was down that track that Willie, one of Jamie’s other friends, had driven us in his old Mini van to race along the sands and skid about.

  I looked through the windows at the empty rooms, the old unmatching furniture sitting in the shadows looking dusty and neglected. An old magazine lay on a table, one corner yellowed with sunlight. In the shade of the gable end of the house I sat down and finished my water, took off my cap and wiped my forehead with my handkerchief. In the distance I could hear muffled explosions from the range farther down the coast, and once a jet came tearing in over the calm sea, heading due west.

  Away from the house a ridge of low hills started, topped with whin and stunted trees shaped by the wind. I trained the binoculars on them, waving flies away, my head starting to ache just a little and my tongue dry despite the warm water I had just drunk. When I lowered the glasses and put the Polaroids back down I heard it.

  Something howled. Some animal – my God, I hoped it wasn’t a human making that noise – screamed in torment. It was a rising, anguished wail, the note produced only by an animal in extremis, the noise you hope no living thing ever has to make.

  I sat with the sweat dripping off me, parched and aching with the baking heat; but I shivered. I shook with a wave of cold like a dog shaking itself dry, from one end to the other. The hair on the back of my neck unstuck itself from the sweat, stood. I got up quickly, hands scrabbling on the warm wood of the house wall, binoculars bumping on my chest. The scream came from the ridge. I pushed the Polaroids back up, used the glasses again, bashing them on the bones above my eyes as I fought with the focusing-wheel. My hands shook.

  A black shape shot out of the whins, trailing smoke. It raced down the slope over the yellow-spangled grass, under a fence. My hands bounced the view around as I tried to pan the binoculars to follow it. The keen wail sounded over the air, thin and terrible. I lost the thing behind some bushes, then saw it again, burning as it ran and jumped over grass and reed, raising spray. My mouth dried completely; I couldn’t swallow, I was choking, but I tracked the animal as it skidded and turned, yelping high, bounding into the air, falling, seeming to leap on the spot. Then it disappeared, a few hundred metres from me and about as much down from the ridge of the hill.

  I swept the glasses quickly back up to look at the top of the ridge again, scanned along it, back, down, back up, along again, stopped to stare intently at a bush, shook my head, scanned the length again. Some irrelevant part of my brain thought about how in films, when people look through binoculars and you see what they are supposed to be seeing, it’s always a sort of figure-of-eight on its side that you see, but whenever I look through them I see more or less a perfect circle. I brought the glasses down, looked about quickly, saw nobody, then I sprinted out of the shadow of the house, leaped the small wire fence that marked the garden, and ran towards the ridge.

  • • •

  On the ridge I stood for a moment, head down to my knees, gasping for breath, letting the perspiration drip off my hair and on to the bright grass at my feet. My T-shirt stuck to me. I put my hands on my knees and lifted my head, straining my eyes to look along the line of whin and trees on the ridge’s top. I looked down the far side and over the fields beyond to the next line of whin, which marked the cutting the railway line ran through. I jogged along the ridge, head sweeping to and fro, until I found a little patch of burning grass. I stamped it out, looked for tracks and found them. I ran faster, despite my protesting throat and lungs, found some more burning grass and a whin bush just catching. I beat them out, went on.

  Down in a small hollow on the land side of the ridge some trees had grown almost normally, only their tops, sticking out over the lee of the line of small hills, leaned out from the sea, twisted by the wind. I ran into the grassy hollow, into the moving pattern of shade provided by the slowly swaying leaves and branches. There was a circle of stones around a blackened centre. I looked around, saw a piece of flattened grass. I stopped, calmed myself, looked around again, at the trees and the grass and the ferns, but could see nothing else. I went to the stones, felt them and the ashes in their circle. They were hot, too hot to keep my hands on them, though they were in shade. I could smell petrol.

  I climbed out of the hollow and up a tree, steadied myself and slowly inspected the whole area, using my binoculars when I had to. Nothing.

  I climbed down, stood for a second, then took a deep breath and ran down the sea-facing side of the hills, heading across diagonally to where I knew the animal had been. I changed course once, to beat out another small fire. I surprised a cropping sheep; jumped right over it as it startled and bounced away, baaing.

  The dog lay in the stream leading out of the marsh. It was still alive, but most of its black coat was gone, and the skin underneath was livid and seeping. It quivered in the water, making me shiver, too. I stood on the bank and looked at it. It could only see with one unburned eye as it raised its shaking head out of the water. In the little pool around it floated bits of clotted, half-burned fur. I caught a hint of the smell of burned meat, and felt a weight settle in my neck, just below my Adam’s apple.

  I took out my bag of steelies, brought one to the sling of the catapult as I unhooked it from my belt, stretched my arms out, one hand by my face, where it was wetted by sweat, then released.

  The dog’s head jerked out of the water, splashing down then up, sending the animal away from me, and over on one side. It floated downstream a little, then bumped, caught by the bank. Some blood flowed from the hole where that one eye had been. ‘Frank’ll get you,’ I whispered.

  • • •

  I dragged the dog out and dug a hole in the peaty ground upstream with my knife, gagging now and again on the smell of the corpse. I buried the animal, looked round again, then, after judging the slightly stiffened breeze, walked away a bit and set fire to the grass. The blaze swept over the last bits of the dog’s fiery trail, and over its grave. It stopped at the stream, where I had thought it would, and I stamped out a few patches of stray fire on the far bank, where a couple of embers had blown.

  When it was over, and the dog buried, I turned for home and ran.

  • • •

  I got back to the house without incident, downed two pints of water, and tried to relax in a cool bath with a carton of orange juice balanced on the side. I was still shaking, and spent a time washing the smell of burning out of my hair. Vegetarian cooking smells came up from the kitchen, where my father was preparing a meal.

  I was sure I had almost seen my brother. That wasn’t where he was camped, I decided, but he had been there, and I had just missed him. In a way I was relieved, and that was difficult to accept, but it was the truth.

  I sank back, let the water wash over me.

  I came down to the kitchen with my dressing-gown on. My father was sitting at the table with a vest and shorts on, elbows on the table, staring at the Inverness Courier. I put the carton of orange juice back in the fridge and lifted the lid of the pot where a curry was cooling. Bowls of salad to accompany it lay on the table. My father turned the pages of the paper, ignoring me.

  ‘Hot, isn’t it?’ I said, for want of anything else.

  ‘Hnnh.’

  I sat down at the other end of the table. My father turned another page, head down. I cleared my throat.

  ‘There was a fire, down by the new house. I saw it. I went and put it out,’ I said, to cover myself.

  ‘It’s the weather for it,’ my father said, without looking up. I nodded to myself, scratching my crotch
quietly through the towelling of the dressing-gown.

  ‘I saw from the forecast it’s supposed to break tomorrow late sometime.’ I shrugged. ‘So they said.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see,’ my father said, turning the paper back to the front page as he got up to have a look at the curry. I nodded to myself again, toying with the end of the belt of the dressing-gown, looking casually at the paper. My father bent to sniff the mixture in the pot. I stared.

  I looked at him, got up, went round to the chair he had been sitting in, stood as though I was looking out of the door, but in fact with my eyes slanted towards the paper. MYSTERY BLAZE IN HOLIDAY COTTAGE, said the bottom eighth of the front page on the left-hand side. A holiday home just south of Inverness had gone up in flames shortly before the paper went to press. The police were still investigating.

  I went back to the other end of the table, sat down.

  We eventually had the curry and the salad, and I started sweating again. I used to think that I was weird because I found that the morning after I had eaten a curry my armpits smelled of the stuff, but I have since found that Jamie has experienced the same effect, so I don’t feel so bad. I ate the curry and had a banana and some yoghurt along with it, but it was still too hot, and my father, who has always had a rather masochistic approach to the dish, left almost half of his.

  • • •

  I was still in my dressing-gown, sitting watching the television in the lounge, when the phone went. I started for the door, but heard my father go from his study to answer it, so I stayed by the door to listen. I couldn’t hear much, but then footsteps came down the stairs and I ran back to my chair, flopped into it and put my head over on one side, eyes closed and mouth open. My father opened the door.