Whit

by Iain Banks

  And so they sat in their coats, clutching each other while their little scented candle flickered in the draught, surrounded by tea chests and boxes full of lard - both symptoms of Aasni's inability either to resist a good deal or to remember how little storage space they had; meanwhile water from their sheets pooled about their feet and threatened to spoil the bags of sugar, flour and custard powder piled under the shelves.

  Then there was a thump as something heavy hit the seaward side of the van. They both jumped. Outside, a male voice moaned, barely audible over the noise of the wind and the waves.

  They had a lantern; they put the little scented candle inside and ventured out into the bellowing blackness of the drenching gale. Lying on the sandy grass by the side of the van was a young white man in a cheap two-piece suit; he had black hair and a terrible head wound in his upper forehead which oozed blood the beating rain washed away.

  They dragged him towards the open rear door of the van; the man came to and moaned again and managed to stand up for a moment; he fell onto the vehicle's floor and they pulled him far enough inside - on a floor lubricated with water and now with blood - to close the banging, wind-blown door.

  He looked deathly white, and shivered uncontrollably, still moaning all the while; blood dribbled from the wound in his forehead. They wrapped their coats around him but he wouldn't stop shivering; Aasni remembered that people who swam the English channel would cover themselves with grease, and so they broke out the lard (of which they had rather more than they needed, due to an irresistible grey-market deal with a man in Carloway who'd found several cases washed ashore) and - setting modesty aside - stripped the man to his sodden underpants and started to cover him in lard. He still shivered. Blood still trickled from his forehead; they cleaned the wound and dabbed some antiseptic on it. Aasni found a bandage.

  Zhobelia opened the special chest her grandmother had sent her from Khalmakistan on her twentieth birthday and took out the bottle of cherished healing ointment called zhlonjiz, which she had been told to keep for extra special emergencies; she made a poultice and put it on the wound, binding his head with the bandage. The man still shivered. They didn't want to get their coats covered with lard, so they opened one of the chests of tea (the tea wasn't in the best of condition anyway, having been stored too long in a barn near Tarbert by a farmer who'd hoped to turn a profit on the wartime black market) and tipped the dark tea leaves over the man's quivering, white-larded form; it took two tea chests to cover him entirely; he seemed half unconscious, still moaning from within his covering of tea and lard, but at least and at last he appeared to have stopped shivering, and for a moment his eyes opened and he looked briefly around and into the eyes of the two sisters before falling back into unconsciousness.

  They started the van with the intention of taking the man to the nearest doctor, but the grass in the little hollow they had parked in was so slippery from the rain they couldn't move the vehicle more than a few feet. Aasni put on her coat and went out into the storm to summon help from the nearest farm with a phone. Zhobelia was left in charge of their deathly white storm-waif.

  She checked that he still breathed, that his poultice was in place and the bleeding had stopped, then she did her best to wring the water out of his clothes. He babbled, talking in a language that Zhobelia could not understand and suspected nobody else would be able to understand either. A couple of times, however, he mumbled the word, 'Salvador…'

  The man, of course, was my Grandfather.

  * * *

  God spoke to Salvador. They were waiting, enthroned in and surrounded by glorious light, at the end of a dark tunnel which my Grandfather seemed to ascend to from the banal world. He assumed he was dying and this was the way to Heaven. God told him it was the way to Heaven but he was not going to die; instead he had to return to the earthly world with a message from Them to humanity.

  Cynics might suggest that it had something to do with the poultice, the potent, exotic, unknown Khalmakistani herbs seeping from it to enter Salvador's bloodstream and poisoning his mind, producing something akin to a hallucinatory 'trip', but the small-(and fearful-) minded will always try to reduce everything to the triviality and mundanity which their stunted, de-spiritualised minds feel safe dealing with. The fact remains that our Founder woke a different man, and - for all that he had almost died from hypothermia aggravated by loss of blood - a better, more whole one; one with a mission, one with a message; a message God had been attempting to transmit complete to Man for a long time through the aggregating clutter of modern life and technology; a message that only somebody whose ambient mental activity had been reduced to something close to quietitude by the proximity of death would be capable of hearing. Possibly other men had heard God's message, but been too close to that edge of death, and slipped over it, unable to transmit the signal on to their fellow men; certainly there had been no shortage of death over the previous decade.

  However that may have been, my Grandfather knew when he finally awoke - on a calm, milky-skyed day, with warm tea being poured down his throat by the two dark-skinned women he had assumed were figments of his imagination - that he was The One; the Enlightened, the OverSeer, to whom God had given the task of establishing an Order which would disseminate the Truth of Their message on earth.

  Thereafter, then, whoever our Founder had been before, whatever had driven him to that place on that night, however he had made his way through the storm - out of the sea, off the land, or even falling from the sky - became unimportant. All that mattered was that Salvador awoke, remembering his vision and the task he had been charged with, and decided he had a purpose in life. He had work to do.

  First, however, there was the matter of a canvas bag…

  * * *

  The last leg of my water-borne journey, in the early evening, seemed to take forever. I had passed beneath the bowed deck of the grey road bridge and the straight bed of the rail bridge fighting an incoming tide with only the wind at my back to aid me; once through the narrows between the Queensferries I could slacken my efforts a little, but every muscle in my upper body felt as if it were on fire.

  Finding that the bottom of my small craft was sloshing with water which had splashed in during my battle with the tides, and fearful for the contents of my kit-bag, I stopped for a while and bailed out the water, using my handkerchief, then I paddled on, between golden sands and quiet wooded shores to my right, and two long, land-isolated jetties to my left, to each of which a huge oil tanker was tied up.

  A motor boat left one of the jetties and swung round towards me. The boat proved to be full of surprised-looking workmen in brightly coloured overalls. At first they seemed reluctant to believe that I was not in some difficulty, but then laughed and shook their heads and told me if I had any sense I'd head for shore and continue on foot. They called me 'hen', which I found mildly insulting, though I think it was meant congenially enough. I thanked them for their advice and they powered off, heading upstream.

  I came ashore, at last, at Cramond, at the point where a line of tall obelisks strides out across the sands to a low island. Just before I touched the sands, I heaved my kit-bag out from under me - it was only a little damp - and dug out the vial of Forth mud to freshen up the mark on my forehead, which I suspected must have been washed off by a combination of spray and sweat. My strange craft bumped ashore onto grey-blond sands, and I got out. I had a little difficulty in standing, and then in straightening, but eventually did so, and luxuriated in a long if painful stretch, all under the quizzical gaze of numerous swans floating in the waters of the river Almond, and a few suspicious-looking youths standing on the promenade.

  'Hey, mister; you ship-wrecked, aye?' one of them shouted.

  'No,' I said, pulling my kit-bag out of the inner-tube and packing the folded trenching tool away. I left my craft lying on the sand by a small slipway and climbed up to the youths. 'And I am a Sister, not a mister,' I told them, drawing myself up.

  They wore baggy clothes and
long-sleeved T-shirts with hoods. Their short hair looked greasy. One of them looked down at the inner-tube. 'Zat big tyre goin' spare then, hen?'

  'It's all yours,' I told them, and walked away.

  I felt a kind of exhilaration then, having accomplished the first part of my journey. I strode out along the esplanade, munching on another naan with my kit-bag slung over my shoulder while my shadow lengthened in front of me. I consulted my map, negotiated a few roads and found the abandoned railway line - now a cycle-way - at Granton Road. Within a hundred yards I discovered a thin, straight, broken branch hanging off a tree by the trail; I tore it down and used my penknife to remove a few twigs, and soon had a serviceable staff to accompany me on my way. The old railway path took me almost three miles towards my destination, by turns under and over the evening traffic; the air was full of the smell of engine exhaust and the sky was lit with flagrant red clouds as I crossed to pick up the towpath of the Old Union Canal and then took the footpath skirting school playing grounds. The last part of my trip was as well accomplished in near darkness, given that it took me along a stretch of railway line which was still in occasional use. I hid in some bushes up the embankment as a loud diesel engine came swinging round the bend from the east, pulling a long train of open, double-deck wagons stacked with cars.

  The red tail-light on the last wagon blinked fast as a racing heart as it disappeared round the turn in the cutting, and I sat there on my haunches for a moment or two, thinking.

  After a moment I got up and continued along the track-side, passing through an abandoned station and then walking under a busy-sounding road junction until I came to within a couple of streets of the home of Gertie Possil, in the douce Edinburgh suburb of Morningside, and arrived there in time to take part in a ceremonial supper.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  'Blessed Isis! Beloved Isis! Oh! What an honour! We are so honoured! Oh! Oh!'

  Sister Gertie Fossil, tiny, white-haired, frail and easily old enough to be my grandmother, made the Sign, set the paraffin lamp she carried down on a narrow table and prostrated herself at my feet, then edged forward until she could touch my boots, which she patted as though they were tiny, delicate animals.

  Gertie Fossil was dressed in something oatmeal-coloured and flowing which settled around her on the black and white tiles of the hallway floor like a pool of porridge. Behind me, the stained-glass door swung shut.

  'Thank you, Sister Gertie,' I said, making the Sign in return and feeling just a little embarrassed at having my boots petted. 'Please; do rise.'

  'Welcome, welcome, to our humble, unworthy house!' she wailed, getting back up again. I helped her the last couple of feet, putting my hand to her elbow, and she stared open-mouthed at my hand and then at my face. 'Oh, thank you, Blessed Isis!' she said, and felt for the glasses that hung from a cord on her chest. She positioned them properly and sighed deeply, staring at me, seemingly lost for words. Behind her, in the dark hallway of the large, gloomy house, stood a tall, plump man with a large and mostly bald head. This was Gertie's son, Lucius. He wore a heavy purple dressing-gown over dark trousers and spatted shoes. A cravat was bunched awkwardly under his double chins. He beamed at me and rubbed his fat hands together nervously.

  'Umm, umm, umm…' he said.

  'Let Lucius take your bag, you wonderful child you,' Gertie Fossil said to me, and then turned to her son. 'Lucius! The Anointed's bag; see? Here! You lump! What's the matter with you?' She tsked as she reverently took my staff and leaned it against the coat stand. 'That boy of mine!' she muttered, sounding exasperated.

  Lucius bumbled forward, bumping into things in the hallway. I handed him my kit-bag. He took it and smiled broadly, nodding, his Adam's apple bobbing up and down like a pigeon's head.

  'Tell the Beloved you are honoured!' Gertie said, using the flat of her hand to hit her son in the stomach with surprising force.

  'Honoured! Honoured!' Lucius gulped, still smiling broadly, nodding vigorously and swallowing powerfully. He swung the kit-bag over his shoulder and clunked the grandfather clock with it. He appeared not to notice. 'Honoured!' he said again.

  'Brother Lucius,' I nodded as Gertie helped me off with my jacket.

  'You must be exhausted!' Gertie said, carefully hanging my jacket on a padded hanger. 'I shall prepare some supper and Lucius will run you a bath. You are hungry, aren't you? You haven't eaten? May I wash your feet? You poor child; you look tired. Are you weary?'

  I glanced at my face in the mirror by the coat hooks, illuminated by the weak yellow light of the paraffin lamp. I thought I did look tired. Certainly I felt weary.

  'It has been a long day,' I admitted as Gertie shooed her son ahead of her towards the stairs. 'I would love a cup of tea, Sister Gertrude, and something to eat. A bath would be pleasant, later.'

  'Of course! And please, call me Gertie! Lucius, you lump; upstairs; the good bedroom!'

  'Thank you,' I said as Lucius thumped up the stairs and his mother led me through to their candle-lit parlour. 'Firstly, however, I must use your telephone to tell the Community I have arrived safely.'

  'Indeed! Of course! It is here…' She doubled back and flitted past me, opening the door to the cupboard under the stairs. She set down the paraffin lamp on a narrow shelf and showed me to a small wooden chair facing a tiny table which supported a large black bakelite phone with a twisted fabric cord. 'I shall leave you the lamp,' she announced. She turned to go, hesitated, gazed raptly at me, then held out her hands to one of mine and tremulously said, 'May I?'

  I gave her my hand and she kissed it. Her thin, pale lips felt soft, and dry as paper. 'Beloved Isis, Blessed Isis!' she said, blinking quickly, and scurried away into the dim hall. I sat down and picked up the phone handset.

  We do not, of course, have a telephone in the Community, and while there is a set in the Woodbeans' house we are allowed to use, we do not make or receive normal calls. There is a tradition in the Order that telephones must only be used for urgent messages, and then not in a way so trivial and facile as by simply lifting the receiver and talking.

  I dialled the Woodbean's number. Above me, I could hear Lucius clumping around on the first floor. I let the phone ring twice, then put it down and dialled again, this time letting it ring nine times, then clicked the cradle buttons down once more before dialling a third time and allowing four more sets of trills to sound.

  This was my special cipher; it had been agreed on the previous evening during our final council of war that no further coded signal would be required to let the Order know that I had arrived safely at the home of Gertie Fossil. This was just as well; sending a long message in this manner - using our own form of Morse code - can take several hours, especially if one has to transmit one's own number to the person initially receiving the call and then has to leave gaps in one's transmission during which they may ring back to send signals containing questions, and never forgetting that there is a degree of inaccuracy inevitable to the whole process anyway, given that the rings heard at the source phone do not always tally exactly with those at the receiving machine (this, I am told, is why a caller can think that a phone they are calling into has been lifted before it has started ringing).

  Of course, we do not ask the Woodbeans to sit by the phone all night noting down the sequence of rings; either a pre-agreed time is set up for a call during which an Orderite will be sitting with pencil and paper in the Woodbeans' front hall, or a special machine can be switched on, designed and built by Brother Indra, which records each trill the phone makes on a piece of paper wound round a metal drum and which is made from bits of an old tape-recorder, a clock and a barometer.

  There was also, of course, a security aspect to all this; while my Grandfather no longer believed there was a special government department dedicated to the observation and harassment of our Order, and there seems to have been little recent interest from those peddlers of prurience, the popular press, it is always wise to keep up one's guard, for - as my Grandfather has pointed out - it
is the surprise attack, the assault undertaken once the victim has been lulled into slackened discipline and sloppy vigilance, that is the most devastating. Some ungracious apostates have suggested that the whole ritual is motivated by a desire to economise on telephone bills, and it is true that the system does have the additional benefit of considerable frugality; however the sheer awkwardness of the whole business surely points to a holier, more pure purpose.

  When I finished my call I joined Gertie in the kitchen, to find her preparing the supper. On the stove, a kettle sat surrounded by several cast-iron pots, all gradually coming to the boil and filling the room with mouth-watering aromas. 'Blessed Isis!' Gertie exclaimed, adding a dab of lard to each of three large white china plates on which tiny piles of tea already sat. 'You said you were hungry.'

  'Indeed I am,' I conceded.

  We ate in the dining room, round a long table of darkly gleaming polished wood whose centre was lined with tall candles, condiments, preserves, pickles and baskets of leavened and unleavened bread. The supper was conducted with all due solemnity. The presence of the lard and the tea on the side of the plate, as well as the incense candles and a dish as grand as venison tikka pasanda, marked this out as a special occasion. I said the blessing, I served the first piece of food from each dish, I read from the Orthography and marked both Gertie and Lucius's foreheads with the vial of mud from home; I even made polite conversation and brought the Fossils up to date with the news from the Community; they had not visited for a year or so, and though they were hoping to be there for the Festival of Love in four weeks' time, they were grateful for a briefing beforehand.

  I accepted the offer of a bath, though I was already almost dead on my feet, and woke to find myself chin-deep in the tepid water, with Gertie banging as loud as deference would allow on the bathroom door. I assured her I was awake again, rinsed and dried and then made my way to my bedroom. It was the finest room in the house and it possessed a large Victorian four-poster bed which I remembered from my visit here three years earlier. This was ideal for my purposes as it meant I was able to sling my hammock between two of the sturdy posts, and even orient my hammock in a direction that ensured my head would be pointing towards the Community. I slept soundly, and dreamed of nothing I could recall.