Whit

by Iain Banks

  '…Excuse me?'

  'Morag Whit, the internationally renowned baryton soloist' I repeated. 'She is my cousin. Does she still live here? This is the last address we have for her.'

  'No. I'm sorry. The lady who used to live here left a couple of months ago.'

  'I see. It's just that I'm her cousin, you see, and my family are rather anxious to trace her. Did she leave a forwarding address?'

  'Not really. Might I ask who that other gentleman is there with you?'

  I straightened and looked, with a degree of consternation, I'll admit, at Zeb. He nodded over our heads to a small box just inside glass doors.

  'Camera,' he said.

  'Good grief!' I said. 'Are we on television?'

  'Closed circuit,' Zeb said.

  'Lordy!' I gulped. 'Is that a much-watched show?' My mouth had gone a little dry.('… Hello?' said the small voice from the grille.)

  Zeb stared at me, frowning with incomprehension. Then he grimaced. 'Not broadcast,' he said, sounding exasperated. 'Security. For flats. Private.'

  I thought I understood and quickly turned back to the grille, blushing and flustered. 'I do beg your pardon, madam. I misunderstood. This is my half-brother, Brother Zebediah, another Luskentyrian.'

  'I'm sorry?' said the female voice. Zeb sighed behind me and I caught him shaking his head out of the corner of my eye. 'Another what?

  'Another Luskentyrian,' I replied, feeling my face colour again. Explaining these things to Blands could be time-consuming. 'It's complicated.'

  'I'm sure. Well,' the voice said with an unmistakable note of finality, 'I'm very sorry I can't help you.'

  'She left no forwarding address?' I said desperately. 'We just want to make sure she's all right.'

  'Well…'

  'Please.'

  '… She did leave the address of her agent, or… manager or something, for anything urgent. But just the address, not phone or fax.'

  'That would be wonderful!' I said. 'Oh, thank you!'

  'Well, just hold on; I'll go get it.' There was a click.

  I turned, feeling relieved, to Zeb, who was looking vaguely out at the trees between us and the road. 'There we are!' I said, and clapped him enthusiastically on the back. He stumbled forward, coughing, and had to jump down a couple of steps before he could regain his balance. He glared back at me.

  '… Hello?' said the metallic voice from the wall.

  * * *

  Our journey from Finchley was relatively simple, taking the Northern Line south to Tottenham Court Road and then walking along Oxford Street and down Dean Street to Brewer Street.

  The premises corresponding to the address we had been given for Cousin Morag's agent - a Mr Francis Leopold - did not look very encouraging.

  'Dirty books?' Zeb said, and made another forlorn attempt to pull his hand through the topological - and trichological - nightmare that was his hair. We stood on the pavement looking at the oddly blank window of something calling itself an Adult Book Shop.

  'Well,' I said, looking to one side. 'The number may refer to this establishment.'

  Zeb glanced. 'Porn cinema.'

  'Or here?'

  Zeb stuck his head into the doorway. 'Peep show. Downstairs. Upstairs. Models. Girls.'

  I must have looked blank.

  'Prostitutes,' he said, sighing.

  'Ah,' I said. 'Well, where shall we inquire first?'

  Zeb's narrow face managed to display a breadth of dubiety. 'Inquire? Really? Wise?'

  'Brother Zebediah,' I said, shocked. 'You're not embarrassed, are you?' I waved at the varied sexual emporia in front of us. 'Such places are stigmatised by a hypocritical society which is still frightened by the power of sexuality; nevertheless in their own admittedly somewhat sordid and avaricious way such places celebrate the physical communion of souls.'

  (Actually, even as I was saying all this, I was feeling a bit dubious about it, but I was more or less quoting a certain Brother Jamie, a convert from Inverness who'd gone to Stirling University, the campus of which was only a few miles from the Community; for some reason this had all sounded more plausible when he'd said it. Now that I was actually confronted with the establishments he had been talking about, they didn't look celebratory at all. However, I'd launched into this mini-sermon so I supposed I'd better round it off, false signal or not.)

  'Why,' I exclaimed, 'by our doctrine they ought to be accorded the status of churches!'

  Brother Zebediah looked levelly at me through hooded eyes for a moment. He took a deep breath, then nodded slowly. 'Churches. Right. Yeah. Way. Go. Okay. Cool. Uh.' He nodded at the nearest door. 'After.'

  * * *

  Our inquiries at the various facilities of dubious repute met with no success. 'What's this abaht?', 'Who're you from?', 'Never 'erd of 'im.', 'Never 'erd of 'ur, neevir.', 'Look, I got a business to run, inn-I?' and 'Fack orf'. comprised the more helpful of the various replies we received. My attempts in the cramped foyer of the erotic picture house to explain that - despite the obvious squalidness of the surroundings and the primarily financial motive behind the pornographic concerns we found ourselves in the midst of - there was still a degree of common cause between such grubbily commercial exploitations of humanity's most holy instinct and the pure, sanctified expression of that urge to be discovered through our Holy Order was met initially with glazed incomprehension.

  Then, quickly thereafter, the back of my jacket and shirt collar were gripped extremely firmly by the heavily ringed hand of a very large crop-haired gentleman in a suit - pushing my hat down over my eyes so that I could hardly see where I was going - and Zeb and I were given an undignifiedly rough escort past a variety of lurid posters to the doors, where we were ejected into the street outside with such force that I almost lost my footing and came within inches of colliding with a person on a motorcycle. This person then skidded to a stop, pushed up his helmet visor and informed me in no uncertain terms of my sexual activity, mental acuity and physical size, characterised me correctly by my genitals, then changed tack and insinuated that my hat was supported by a - presumably grossly enlarged - male sexual organ, and finally that my parents' union had not been sanctioned either by the state or an established church.

  I tipped my hat and begged his pardon. He roared away, shaking his crash helmet.

  Zeb joined me on the far pavement; his collar had been in the other fist of the man who had seen us off (who was now standing with his arms massively crossed, filling the doorway to the cinema). A few people in the crowded street were looking at us.

  'Okay?' Zeb asked.

  'Dignity a little tarnished,' I told him, adjusting the lapels of my jacket. 'Otherwise, uninjured. And you?'

  'Fine,' Zeb said, shrugging his shoulders forward and pulling down on his jumper.

  'Good,' I said, adjusting my hat properly. 'Time for a cup of tea, I think; what do you say?'

  'Tea. Yeah. Right. Café. There.'

  * * *

  The Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, proved no more able to offer help, if rather more polite and stately in the manner of not providing it.

  'Well, obviously, we are not really the sort of venue one would find a soloist at,' said the young man who had been summoned by the box office to talk to us. He seemed quite pleasant and well dressed, though he appeared to be troubled by his hair, a length of which over his right temple continually fell over his right eye and had to be swept back into place. I was surprised to find somebody working for an Opera House who did not appear to open his teeth or make more than the most cursory of movements with his lips when he spoke.

  'I see,' I said. Our surroundings now were rather at the other end of the scale from the pornographic picture house only a fraction of a mile away, though the amount of gilt and deep, vibrant colours gave the magnificent foyer a similar if more monumental feel. 'But you have heard of her; Morag Whit, the internationally renowned baryton soloist?'

  'Baryton,' the young man said, sweeping his blond hair back and staring at the
central chandelier high above us. 'Baryton…' He pursed his lips. 'Isn't that in Ireland somewhere?'

  'It is a form of viola da gamba,' I said frostily. 'With extra resonating strings.'

  'Yes,' the young man said, drawing the word out as though it was an extrusion. 'Yes.' He nodded. 'You know, I think I did see something about a concert once…'

  'It would probably be my cousin who was soloist,' I told him.

  'Hmm,' he said, crossing his arms and putting one hand up to his mouth. 'Apart from that, I really can't help you, I'm afraid. I can't imagine what your cousin was doing writing to you on our headed notepaper, but then I imagine it isn't something we keep under lock and key, exactly, and of course with photocopiers and so on these days, well…' He smiled, tipping his head to one side. His hair fell over his eye again; he swept it back once more.

  'I see,' I said. 'Oh well, thank you anyway.' I fished in one of my jacket pockets.

  'My pleasure,' he said, smiling. He turned to go, his hair falling over his eye again as he did so.

  'Please; with my compliments.' I handed him a Kirbigrip.

  * * *

  'Well,' I said, 'this is all most odd.' Brother Zebediah and I stood on the terrace of the Royal Festival Hall in a mild, blustery river wind, looking across the broad, grey-brown back of the River Thames. Pleasure boats crisscrossed before us, sunlight glinting on their windows as they rocked across the waves and slapped through the scissoring wakes of their fellow craft.

  'Yep.'

  I turned to face Zeb, arms folded, my back against the railings. Zeb's face looked pinched and jerky somehow. 'But I have seen the poster!' I protested.

  'Yep.'

  The Royal Festival Hall claimed never to have heard of Cousin Morag; they certainly had not hosted a concert by her at eight o'clock on Tuesday, the 16th of February, 1993, which was - unless my normally accurate and reliable memory was failing me - the date and time detailed on the poster which hung in the hall of the mansion house back in High Easter Offerance and which my Grandfather was so proud of.

  The eventually helpful lady member of staff we had been referred to was adamant that no person of that name was known to her, and that indeed there had never been a solo baryton concert in the South Bank complex (at least when I mentioned the instrument itself she had heard of that; I was beginning to wonder if it existed). She was slim, cardiganed and well-spoken and her hair was neatly bunned. I suspected at the time - from her confident manner and general bearing - that I had met a memory as retentive as my own, but knew that one of us must be wrong, and so implored her to check. She invited us to take a seat in the coffee bar and disappeared back into the administrative offices of the building, to reappear with a large, battered-looking thing she called a print-out and which detailed all the events in the various parts of the complex over the year 1993.

  'If there had been such a concert it would probably have been more suited to the Purcell Room…" she told us, leafing through the broad, green-lined pages.

  'Could the poster have got the year wrong?' I asked.

  She looked sour and took off her glasses. 'Well, it certainly didn't happen last year; I'd remember, but if you really want I can check 'ninety-two.'

  'I'd be terribly grateful,' I said in a small voice, taking off my hat and trying to look waif-like.

  She sighed. 'All right.'

  I watched her go. 'Brother Zebediah,' I said to him. He looked startled, as if he had been falling asleep in his seat. 'I think we ought to get the lady a cup of coffee, don't you?'

  He looked at me. I nodded towards the serving counter. He looked cross for a moment. 'Me,' he said. 'Always. Me. Paying. Not,' he waved one hand at me. 'Turn?' (I glared at him.) 'No?' he said, faltering.

  'Brother Zebediah,' I said, drawing myself up and putting my hat back on. 'I am on a highly important mission with the blessing of and instructions directly from our Founder himself; I do have some emergency funds but otherwise I am relying on the support of the Blessed, whether they adhere strictly to our code or not. I hope you are not already forgetting the gravity of this matter; Morag has been central to our missionary plans for some time now, quite apart from being especially favoured by our dear Founder and due to take centre-stage at the quadrennial Festival. We all have to make sacrifices at such a time, Brother Zebediah, and I am shocked that you should-'

  'Right! Okay! Right! All right! I'm going!' he said, interrupting me before I had really had a chance to make my point. He loped off to the counter.

  The lady did not want any coffee, which put me at a disadvantage with Brother Zebediah for the rest of the meeting, during which I became convinced that Cousin Morag had indeed never played on the South Bank. I thanked her as she rose to leave and then I sat back, thinking. Zeb drank the cup of cooling coffee with a smug expression and an unnecessary amount of noise.

  'No forwarding address, no agent, no concerts; nobody has heard of her!' I exclaimed. 'And her a soloist of international repute!'

  'Yup. Weird.'

  In such a situation the average person might start to doubt their sanity. However, Luskentyrians have it drummed into them from a very early age that it is the outside world, the world of the billions of Blands, that is obviously, demonstrably, utterly and (in the short term) irredeemably insane, while they themselves have had the immense good luck (or karma, if you like, there's a fine and still debatable theological point at issue here) to be born into the one True Church with a decent grasp of reality and a plausible explanation for everything.

  I did not, therefore, even begin to question whether I was in full possession of my faculties (with the singular and brief exception of my memory, as mentioned above), though I was well aware something was seriously out of kilter somewhere, and that as a result my mission was rapidly taking on a degree of complexity and difficulty neither I nor my fellow Officers back at the Community had bargained for.

  Urgent action was obviously called for.

  What I really needed to do was talk to God.

  CHAPTER NINE

  I think my Grandfather still holds that one of the greatest achievements of his ministry was the conversion of Mr McIlone to the set of beliefs which at the time our Founder was still in the act of formulating. If I say that I suspect it was also an accomplishment my Grandfather found extremely enjoyable and hence craved to repeat, I think I am paying our Founder a compliment, given the intrinsic goodness and holiness of the act concerned.

  Mr McIlone was a kindly, generous man, but a free-thinker; an atheist of long standing who had had the strength of will and character - however fundamentally misguided and wrong-headed - to maintain and preserve his sinful belief in the face of the opprobrium and isolationary contempt of a conservative and even self-righteous community of the sort that tends to get called 'close-knit' by those not inclined to search overly long for their images of social cohesion.

  While by our creed we must count the dour Presbyterians of the Western Isles, with their cruelly humourless, fear-demanding and vindictive-sounding idea of God, our allies (whether they like it or not), and the humanely compassionate Mr McIlones of this world our evangelical prey at best and outright opponents at worst, and it is undeniably more effective preaching to the already half converted than attempting to plant the seeds of faith in souls hardened by a history of material Falseness, there is nevertheless often more common cause spiritually to be found with those who are naturally generous, sharing, wise and enlightened (but by chance brought up out-with the sight and hearing of God) than with those who - while part of a community or faith whose beliefs are in some strategic sense more in keeping with our own - are by the very strictness and severity of that persuasion individually far less happily unrestricted in the joy of their worship of God and the appreciation of the beauty of the Universe, the World and the Human, in both its spiritual and its physical form.

  I think myself that by the sound of it Mr McIlone was one of those sensitive souls prone rather to Despair. He was like my Grandfather i
n seeing little but cruel idiocy in the actions of his fellow humans, but different from him in choosing for his response the easy, easeful option of simply condemning everybody and turning his back on the world.

  From what I have read - and I think I may fairly claim to have read a fair amount, for my age - I think it must have seemed a world worth turning one's back on; the most destructive war in all history was finally over, but only at the cost of ushering in - with those two diabolic nuclear dawns over Japan - an age which seemed to have finally brought the epoch of Apocalypse to earth. The thunderous, earth-shaking power to annihilate whole cities in an instant that Humanity had habitually ascribed to its gods was now at Man's own beck and call, and no god ever seemed so fearful and capricious as the new possessor of that power.

  Humanity had thought itself progressing, after that earlier war to end wars, only to discover, once the dust and soot had settled, that one of the world's most civilised and sophisticated nations had found no better outlet for its ingenuity than to attempt to annihilate industrially an ancient people who had probably contributed more to the world's store of learning than any other single group (and perhaps knew, too, that their own nations had colluded in the prelude to that terminal obscenity).

  And what future beckoned, after this spasm of destruction and the death of any idea that Humanity was in some way rational, that Humanity, indeed, was reliably humane?

  Why, only the continuation of war in another, colder form, with weapons fit for the end of the world; Allies becoming enemies and the real victors of the European war turning upon themselves and their new conquests with redoubled savagery, as though their twenty million dead had only given the apparatus a taste for it. (Meanwhile Mr Orwell, on another Hebridean island, near the whirlpool, wrote what he almost called 1948.)

  This was Mr McIlone's world, then, as was the pallid, washed-out Britain of the still-rationed late 'forties, and for all that the semi-independent croft and fishing economy of the Western Isles softened the blow of some of the shortages most keenly felt in cities on the mainland, it was still a hard, cold, windswept place, where a man lived close to land or sea with only his God, family and friends and sometimes the drink to sustain him and provide a little comfort.