Whit

by Iain Banks

  'Good morning,' I said. 'Bernie said you wanted a word?'

  Allan shrugged, smiling. 'Oh, it was nothing,' he said, walking downstairs with me. 'It was just we heard Aunt Brigit wouldn't be coming back for the Festival, that's all; thought you could have mentioned it.'

  'Oh. Well, that's a pity. But you'll see Grandad today; you tell him.'

  'Well, yes, but it's just that he takes these things better from you, doesn't he? I mean, you're the apple of his eye, aren't you? Eh, sis?' He nudged me and favoured me with a sly grin as we reached the bottom of the steps. The smell of polish lingered and the floor looked like an ice rink, but Elias and Herb had departed.

  'If you say so,' I told him. He held open the front door for me and I preceded him into the courtyard. He pulled on his tweed jacket. 'You off to Dunblane?'

  'I am.'

  'Right.' He nodded, gazing up at the gauzy mist as we walked across the damp cobbles. 'Just thought I'd take a saunter out to the road-end,' he told me. 'Give whoever's on the post-run a hand.' He adjusted one shirt cuff. 'Expecting some fairly heavy parcels,' he explained. 'Hamper, perhaps.' (We do all our food shopping by post, for somewhat ridiculous reasons I shall probably have to explain later. There are hidden intricacies and interpretative choices associated with the post-run itself, too.) We stopped, facing each other in the centre of the courtyard.

  'How's, ah… how's the revision going?' he asked.

  'Fine,' I told him.

  'He changing much?' Allan asked, dropping his voice so slightly he probably didn't realise he was doing it, and unable to resist a furtive-looking glance at the mansion house.

  'Not really,' I said.

  Allan looked at me for a moment. I suspected he was debating with himself whether to be sarcastic. Apparently the decision went my way. 'It's just, you know,' he said, looking pained, 'some of… some of the others are a bit worried about what the old guy might be changing.'

  'You make it sound like a will,' I smiled.

  'Well,' Allan nodded. 'It is his legacy, isn't it? To us, I mean.'

  'Yes,' I said. 'But as I said, he isn't changing much; just tidyings up, mostly. So far we've spent most time explaining false signals; the early self-heresies; he's been trying to explain the circumstances behind them.'

  Allan crossed his arms then put one hand to his mouth. 'I see, I see,' he said, looking thoughtful. 'Still think all this will be ready come the Festival?'

  'He thinks so. I'd imagine so.'

  My brother flashed a sudden smile. 'Well, that sounds all right, doesn't it?'

  'I'd say so.'

  'Good. Well…'

  'See you later,' I said. 'Go with God.'

  'Yes, you too.' He smiled uncertainly and walked away.

  I turned and headed out of the Community.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The main buildings of High Easter Offerance form the shape of an H with one end walled off; I went from the enclosed courtyard through the gateway into the open yard beyond, where chickens clucked and jabbed at the ground and the wheeze of the bellows serving Brother Indra's forge sounded from the blacksmith's shop (I looked for Indra but could not see him). Past the animal sheds and barns lay some of our collection of long-immobile vehicles; half a dozen old coaches, one double-decker omnibus, four pantechnicons, a couple of flat-bed lorries, ten vans of varying capacities and one small rusting fire-engine, complete with brass bell. Not one is younger than twenty years old and all are so surrounded, and in some cases invaded, by weeds and plants it would probably take a tractor or a tank to rip them free, even if their tyres and wheels were present and intact and their axles not rusted solid. The vehicles shelter some of the less hardy crops for which there is not sufficient room in the glass houses to the south of the main buildings and provide extra dormitory and living accommodation, or just additional dry storage space. They also make a wonderful place to play when you are a child.

  From there the road leads to the fields through the gap in the railway embankment where a single-span bridge used to carry the railway above; I struck off from the track there and ascended the grassy bank.

  * * *

  The raised bed of the old railway line was crossed by swollen bridges of golden mist, slowly moving and changing in the cool morning sunlight and offering glimpses of our cattle, sheep and wheat fields; a group of Saved digging out a ditch in the hazy distance helloed and waved, and I flourished my hat at them.

  As I walked, I felt the usual feeling of calmness and dissociation creep over me, perhaps enhanced on this occasion by the shining, intermittently enveloping veils of mist, cutting me off both from the Community and the outer world.

  I thought of Grandfather Salvador, and his warning regarding reporters. I wondered how serious he was being. I have never doubted that our Founder is a wise and remarkable man, and possessed of insights that justifiably put him on the same level as the great prophets of old, but as he himself has said, God has a sense of humour (who can look at the work that is Man and deny this?), and my Grandfather is not above reminding us of this by way of taunting our credulity. Still, some of us trust a prophet the more when he admits to teasing us on occasion.

  It has to be admitted that my Grandfather suffers from a spasmodic obsession with the media, and has done ever since the founding of our faith. The trouble with the media - and certain government agencies - is that they are liable, on occasion, to refuse to be ignored. Getting away from most aspects of the modern world is simply a matter of avoiding them (for example, if one refuses to enter shops, shopkeepers can generally be relied upon not to come and drag you in off the street) but the media, like the police or social workers, are capable of coming to seek you out if they think they have just cause.

  Probably the worst time was during the early eighties, when there were a number of so-called exposés in the press and a couple of television reports on what they were pleased to call our 'Bizarre Love-Cult'. These were usually highly distorted pieces of nonsense about strange sex rituals disseminated by lapsed converts - sad cases to a man - who had found that the farm work in the Order was too hard and gaining access to the female body rather less easy than they had heard, or imagined. The most worrying of these lies hinted at the involvement of Community children in such practices, and threatened the involvement of the authorities.

  I was only a child at the time but I am proud that we responded as sensibly as we did. Educational inspectors and health workers confirmed that we primary-age, home-taught children were better educated and healthier than most of our peers, and secondary schoolteachers practically fell over themselves to praise the exemplary work and discipline of the Community children who came to them. We were also able to point out that no under-age girl had ever fallen pregnant while in the care of our Order. Reporters, meanwhile, were offered the chance to stay and work within our Community for as long as they liked, providing they brought a willingness to work for their keep, notebooks rather than tape-recorders, and a sketch pad in place of a camera. Grandfather Salvador himself was the epitome of openness, and - while politely deflecting questions about his upbringing and early history - so concerned with the souls of the few reporters who did turn up that he took it upon himself to devote several extra hours each night to explaining his ideas and philosophy to them. Interest waned almost disappointingly quickly, though one journalist did stay on for half a year; I don't think we ever did trust her, however, and indeed it turned out she was only researching for a book on us. Apparently it was no more accurate than it was successful.(Luckily, none of this prurient interest coincided with our four-yearly Festival of Love, when things are more focusedly carnal and we do tend to behave a little more like the popular image we acquired then… though I can honestly report that despite the fact I was fifteen years old at the time of the last one - and physically sexually mature - far from being involved in any way I was quite firmly excluded from the proceedings precisely because I had not reached the age of consent the outside world deemed appropriate. At the time I
felt a degree of annoyance and frustration, although now that the next Festival is almost upon us and I am liable to be as much one of the centres of attention as I desire, I admit my feelings have changed somewhat.)

  At any rate, we are always on guard whenever some new seeker after truth appears on our doorstep, and whenever we venture outside the Community.

  My thoughts turned to my maternal grandmother, Yolanda. We had been warned to expect one of her annual visits sometime over the next few weeks, before the next Festival of Love. Yolanda is a sun-weathered but leanly fit Texan in her early sixties with no shortage of funds and a sharply colourful turn of phrase ('Nervouser than a rattler in a room full of rockin' chairs' is one expression that has always stuck in my mind). She joined our Order at the same time as her daughter, Alice (my mother), though she has never stayed at the Community for longer than a couple of weeks at a time, save for two three-month periods after first Allan and then I were born.

  Perhaps because they are both such strong characters, she has never entirely got on with Salvador, and over the last few years she has taken to staying at Gleneagles Hotel - only twenty minutes from here, the way Yolanda drives - and coming in each day to visit us, when she organises self-help classes, usually for women only; it is to her that I owe whatever skills I possess when it comes to accurate long-range spitting, Texan leg-wrestling and prompt bodily self-defence with special reference to the more vulnerable and sensitive parts of a man. Thanks to her, I am also probably the only person in my neighbourhood to own a combined knuckle duster and bottle opener, even if it does languish forever unused at the bottom of the underwear drawer in my bedroom.

  I suspect Yolanda has at least partially lost her faith (she is untypically coy on the subject), but I could not deny that I was looking forward to seeing her, and experienced a pleasant glow of excitement at the prospect.

  I thought, too, about Allan, and how he had changed over the past year since Sister Amanda had borne him Mabon, a son. It was as though he had refined himself in his dealings with the rest of us and with me in particular, treating us all somehow more formally, less warmly, as if his reserve of care and love was too drained by the demands made on it by Amanda and the baby to spare us what we had come to think of as our due portion. He seemed also to have developed a habit of asking me to deliver any bad news to our Grandfather, claiming - as he had that morning - that my elect status, and perhaps my gender, made Salvador look more kindly upon me than him, so increasing the chances he might accept ill-tidings with less equanimity - (and health-) threatening distress.

  Somewhat past the boundary of our land, I tutted to myself and stopped a moment, reaching into my pocket and taking out a small vial; I opened it, dipped my finger inside and smeared a little of the grey substance inside onto my forehead, in a tiny V-shape just under my hairline, then replaced the vial and continued on my way.

  The mark dried slowly in the humid air. It was written with nothing more exotic than ordinary Forth mud, taken from the banks of the river where it rolls past the Community; just silt (and quite likely largely cow silt and bull silt, given the many herds farmed in fields upstream from us). It marks us all with our Founder's stigmata and reminds us that our bodies come from, and are destined for, the common clay.

  We imprint ourselves so for our own and not for others' benefit - certainly not to advertise ourselves - but the mud anyway tends to dry a shade barely lighter than my skin and is often hidden by the half-inch of hair that hangs over it.

  I strode along the old track, alone in the drifting golden mist.

  * * *

  I negotiated the A84 by means of a muddy foot tunnel, and the river Teith via the broad curved top of an otherwise buried oil pipeline.

  It was here by the side of the A84 I'd first Healed, that day Allan and I found the fox lying in the field. Whenever I passed this spot I always looked for a fox and thought back to that high summer day, to the feel of the animal in my hands and the smell of the field and the wide, prized-open eyes of my brother.

  When I'd returned to the farm later, sauntering back chewing on a length of straw, I'd been taken straight to my Grandfather. He'd shouted at me and made me cry for playing so close to the road, then cuddled me and told me I'd obviously inherited a way with animals from my late father, and if I ever brought anything else back to life I ought to let him know; it might be that I had a Gift.

  Ever since then I've been smoothing away aches and pains and limps and assisting at births in the byres and barns. Out of the numerous hamsters, kittens, puppies, lambs, kids and chicks I've been brought over the years by tearful children, I think I've coaxed one or two back to life, but I would be loath to swear to it and anyway, it is really God who does the Healing, not I (regardless, still, I wonder: does it work at a distance?}.

  My ability with people I am even more sceptical about, even though I know that I certainly feel something when I lay my hands on them. Personally, I am more inclined to believe it is their own Faith in the Creator that heals them, rather than any real power of mine, but I suppose it would be wrong to deny there is something mysterious going on, and I hope that what I call humility in myself is not faintheartedness.

  * * *

  I attained the Carse of Lecropt road between the farms of Greenocks and Westleys and crossed over the M9 motorway and under the Stirling-Inverness railway line on my way to Bridge of Allan, already bustling with school, commuter and delivery traffic. Bridge of Allan is a pleasant, ex-spa town at the foot of a wooded ridge. When I was younger I believed my brother when he told me that it had been named after him.

  The path up the east bank of Allan Water continued through the woods of the Kippenross estate in a cool, sunken track before skirting the bottom edge of Dunblane golf course - where a few early golfers were already swinging clubs and lofting balls - before depositing me near the centre of Dunblane, with only the dual carriageway and a few small streets between me and the cathedral. The mists had lifted, the morning was warm and by this time I had my jacket over my shoulder and my hat in the other hand; I held the hat in my teeth while I used my fingers to comb my damp hair forward over my forehead.

  I dallied just a little in the town, looking in shop windows and glancing at the headlines of newspapers displayed outside the newsagent, fascinated and repelled as ever by the gaudy goods and the loud black letters. I am well aware at such moments that I resemble the proverbial small child with its nose pressed against a sweet-shop window, and hope that I draw some humility from this realisation. At the same time, I have to admit to a sort of thirst; a hankering after some of these vapidities which makes it a relief to recall that as I have not a single penny in my pockets, such goods (so ill-named, as my Grandfather has pointed out) remain entirely out-with my reach. Then I shook myself and strode towards the long, weathered-sandstone bulk of the cathedral.

  Mr Warriston was waiting in the choir.

  * * *

  I learned to play the organ in the mansion house's meeting room when I was still too short to be able to reach the highest stops or depress the pedals without falling off the seat. I could not read music, though my cousin Morag could, and she taught me the rudiments of that skill. Later, she would play the cello while I played the organ, her reading from her score while I extemporised. I think we sounded good together, even though the ancient organ was wheezy and in need of the sort of professional and expensive repairs and refurbishment even brother Indra could not supply (I learned to avoid certain notes and stops).

  I believe it was God who brought me here five years ago on one of my regular long walks, shortly after the Flentrop had been installed, and had me stare so admiringly at its pipe-gleaming, fabulously carved wooden heights and so greedily at its keyboards and stops in the presence of one who could appreciate my admiration that that person, Mr Warriston - one of the cathedral's custodians and an organ enthusiast himself - felt moved to ask me if I played.

  I assured him that I did, and we talked a little while about the abilit
ies and limitations of the organ I had learned on (I did not mention the mansion house or our Order by name, though apparently Mr W guessed my origins from the first; to my relief he has never seemed either unduly interested in or appalled by us or the lies and rumours associated with us). Mr Warriston is a tall, gaunt man with a pinched, grey but genial face and a soft voice; he is fifty years of age but looks more elderly. He was invalided out of his job with the Hydro Board some years before I met him. He had been about to test the organ for a recital to be given that evening; he let me sit on the narrow bench in front of the three stepped keyboards, pointed out the pedals and the stops with their odd, Dutch names - Bazuin and Subbas, Quintadeen and Octaaf, Scherp and Prestant, Salicionaal and Sexquilter - and then - by God, the glory of it - he let me play the gorgeous, sonorously alive thing, so that, hesitantly at first, only gradually finding my way about the first small part of the great instrument's abilities, I filled the mighty space around us with rolling swells of sound, shrilling and booming and swooping and soaring amongst the timbers, stones and glorious glass of that towering house of God.

  * * *

  'And what was that you were playing today, Is?' Mr Warriston asked, setting down a cup of tea on the small table by my chair.

  'I'm not sure,' I admitted, taking up my cup. 'Something my cousin Morag used to play.' I sipped my tea.