Whit

by Iain Banks

  'Mad.' Zeb stood there in the hall, shaking his head. He grinned. 'Tough,' he said.

  'Cookie,' I agreed, and patted Zeb on the shoulder, as though passing it on.

  CHAPTER 12

  I think it was my friend Mr Warriston of Dunblane who observed that the ridicule of fools is the surest sign of genius, and the scorn of political or religious leaders one of the least ambiguous signals that the object of their venom is espousing something threateningly close to the truth.

  To this I would only add that as most of us are only too willing to define a fool precisely as a person who disagrees with us, a degree of self-fulfilment is inevitably introduced to the process which - while smacking of a kind of facile elegance - robs the observation of much of its utility.

  Either way, it has always seemed to me that the average person has no difficulty weighing their own desires, prejudices and bigotries against the totality of the world's most sophisticated philosophies and every moral lesson such systems have ever given rise to, and judging their selfishness to be the more worthy of action.

  As a Luskentyrian, of course, I am far from being an average person, and as a third-generation Leapyearian (indeed, the only one), I have privilege heaped upon exclusivity, with all the responsibility and freight of consideration that entails. Perhaps, therefore, it is not really my place to judge my fellows too harshly when what we share is debatably of less importance than that which divides and distinguishes us, which made me no better than the four men I'd left on their knees wheezing and cursing outside the station the previous day. Nevertheless, whether it was good for my soul or not, I was still relishing the memory the following morning while I stood at a motorway on-ramp in Gunnersbury, being occasionally jeered at from passing cars and vans - perhaps on account of my gender, perhaps due to my hat - and, as a rule, insulted by the drivers whose offers of a lift I declined because their automobiles seemed somehow too Blandly conventional.

  This was part of my strategy for shaking the faith-corroding influence of the big city off my feet. I had grown too used to the electric light of the squat (which had confused me, once I'd stopped to think about it, but had been explained to me as simply the result of the electricity company not caring whether the building was legally occupied or not as long as the bills were paid). I had considered taking more of the cannabis cigarettes last night while Boz - with backing in mono by Zeb - detailed my exploits of the day to the others and I glowed with pride in spite of myself, regardless of an outward show of modesty. In the end I had not indulged.

  I had a word with Zeb, telling him that I thought it best that I continued to search for Morag in the hope that my mission might be successful before I - or anybody else - reported back the bad news concerning our cousin's double life. Zeb did not demur. Then I had said my goodnights and goodbyes at a still respectable hour and gone to my hammock, pleased at not having given in to temptation. Next morning, however, I had found myself thinking about hopping on a bus or taking a tube, while I walked from Kilburn to here in the breaking dawn. Again, I had resisted, but all these urges and hankerings were signs that I was becoming infected with the thoughts and habits of the Unsaved.

  There is a perhaps perverse pleasure to be had from not taking the obvious course bred into all Luskentyrians and diligently developed all our lives; the longer I stood on the slip road leading to the motorway and turned down the offers of lifts - sometimes successfully waving on one of the other people hitch-hiking there to take the vehicle instead - the better I felt about this latest leg of my mission. I was experiencing an odd mix of emotions; elation at my feats of guile and arms the day before, relief at leaving the big city, a nagging homesickness and general feeling of missing everybody at the Community, disquiet that - unless either I or the young man at La Mancha had entirely got hold of the wrong end of the stick - my cousin Morag seemed to have developed an antipathy towards me and might even be avoiding me, and an undercurrent of paranoia that one or more of the men I'd attacked with the pepper sauce yesterday might for some reason drive past while I was standing here and jump out and attack me.

  I kept telling myself there were getting on for seven million people in London alone and Brentwood was really quite far away and almost directly opposite from the direction I'd be travelling in, but I think it was that fear that finally overcame the prideful feeling of blessed righteousness I was experiencing by turning down all those offered rides and made me accept a lift from a nice young couple in a small, old and rather tinny French car. They were only going as far as Slough, but it got me started. They commented on my Sitting Board; I started explaining about Luskentyrianism and our ascetic tendencies. They looked glad to get rid of me.

  I estimated it took me ninety minutes or more first to make my way out of Slough and then to get another lift, this time in the back of a builder's pick-up whose cab was crammed with three young men in what looked like football strips. They took me as far as Reading; cement dust flew up in the slipstream and stung my eyes.

  I spent about an hour by the side of the A4 on the outskirts of Reading - mostly spent studying my map and brushing cement dust off my jacket and trousers - then accepted a ride from a well-groomed but casually dressed chap heading for an amateur cricket match in Newbury. He asked about the Sitting Board too; I told him it was a kind of prayer mat, which I think just confused him. I studied the book of maps in his car and decided against the obvious course of being dropped at the junction with the motorway to continue along the M4, accepting it as more blessed to stay with the byways. I stuck with the man - a sales rep for a pharmaceutical company, though obviously off-duty, as it were - all the way to Newbury and chatted easily enough to him. I suspect that I was being flirted with but I'm really a novice in such matters so perhaps he was just being friendly. While walking out of Newbury I ate the sandwiches Roadkill had given me the previous evening.

  In succession, my next hitches took me to Burbage (with a chain smoker; more eye watering), Marlborough (courtesy of a youngish off-duty soldier who kept brushing my thigh and hip with his hand when he changed gear, until I ostentatiously extracted the six-inch hat-pin from my lapel and started picking my teeth with it), Calne (a kindly greying fellow on his way back from what sounded like an assignation), Chippenham (in a delivery lorry with a sorry soul who was to become a father for the first time later that month, and due to hear the following morning whether he had lost his job in something ominous called a rationalisation) and finally, with the light fading fast, to a village called Kelston with another couple. They were rather older and even more chatty than the two who'd begun the day. They commented on my Sitting Board, too; I told them it was to combat a back problem. They invited me to stay at their house in Kelston. I declined politely, though I availed myself of a look at their road atlas. I slung my hammock in a wood on the village outskirts. It rained for a while during the night; I used my kit-bag as an extra covering, but still got wet.

  I woke feeling damp and stiff and cold shortly after dawn and washed my face in the heavy dew that lay upon the grass, then climbed the most scalable-looking tall tree I could find, partly for the exercise and partly so that I would warm up.

  Above the tree tops, the sky looked worryingly red, but beautiful all the same, and I sat there, wedged in amongst the branches for a while just watching the soft clouds move and listening to the birds sing, and praising God and Their Creation with a song of my own, sung silently in my soul.

  * * *

  I walked through Bath's outskirts to the A39 and after about an hour's walk started hitching just past a large roundabout. The traffic seemed much busier than the day before, and it was only as I stood at the side of the road trying to account for this that I realised today was Monday and yesterday had been Sunday; I cursed myself for a fool, not having realised this the day before. It made no difference to my journey or quest for Morag, but I had been slow not to ask myself why so few of the people who'd given me lifts the day before had been working.

  It was n
ot unusual for Luskentyrians to lose track of the days - we work on the natural cycles of lunar month and year, not artificial divisions like weeks - but I had thought that living in the midst of the Norms I would naturally fall into their ways;

  I suppose the squat in Kilburn had been less than archetypically Bland. I thought of home again, and everybody there. I hoped Mr Warriston wouldn't be too worried when I didn't turn up to play the Flentrop. For a while, as the traffic roared past on its way back in towards Bath, I wallowed in a sweet, lost feeling of self-pity, imagining what everyone back home would be doing now, and hoping some of them were missing me.

  I shook off the mood and concentrated on feeling positive and looking pleasant and eager, but not seductive. Within a few more minutes I got a lift from a baker returning home after a night shift; I walked from a village called Hallatrow to one called Farrington Gurney and - courtesy of a commuting office manager - was in Wells before the shops were open.

  Wells possesses an attractive cathedral and seemed altogether quite a pleasant, holy place. I felt a certain pleasing fitness that I had ended up here this morning when normally I would have been visiting Dunblane, and was tempted to stay and take a look around, but decided to press on. A traffic warden gave me directions for Clissold's Health Farm and Country Club, which was less than ten miles away, near the village called Dudgeon Magna. I started walking west and kept my thumb out as I left the small town behind; a strange-looking van stopped within a minute, barely a furlong beyond the speed-limit sign.

  The van's bodywork appeared at first sight to be constructed of bricks. The back door opened to reveal a group of motley-dressed young people sitting on sleeping bags, rucksacks and bed-rolls.

  'Headin' for the gig?' one called.

  'No, a place called Dudgeon Magna,' I said. There was some muttering amongst the young people. Finally somebody up front looked at a map and the message came back to hop in. I sat on the ridged metal floor

  'Yeah, 'pparently it used to belong to a company that sold stone cladding and wall coverings and stuff,' said the lass I was sitting next to, who was about my age. I'd commented on the van's odd appearance.

  The old vehicle had sheets of artificial brick stuck to the inside as well as the outside. The ten young people it contained were on their way to some sort of party in a field near Glastonbury.

  I thought back to the map I'd looked at the night before. 'Isn't this a rather strange route to take to Glastonbury?' I asked.

  ''Voiding the filth,' the chap at the wheel called back cheerfully.

  I nodded as though I knew what he was talking about.

  'What's in Dudgeon Magna?' one of the others asked.

  'My cousin,' I told her. She was dressed like the others, in layers of holed, ragged but colourful clothes; she wore sensible-looking boots that had obviously seen a few fields in their time. The six young men all had dreadlocks - I'd asked Roadkill what they were called - and the four young women all had part or all of their heads shaved. I wondered if perhaps they were part of some Order.

  'Shouldn't that be Dudgeon Alto or something?' another lass asked, passing me a can of cider.

  I smiled. 'I suppose it should be really, shouldn't it?' I said, tasting the drink in the can.

  'Oh fuck,' said our driver. 'What are they doing here?'

  'Roadblock,' the fellow in the passenger seat said. 'Bastards.' Various of the others got up and crowded round the area just behind the seats, making noises of disappointment and annoyance.

  'It's the pigs,' somebody muttered back to those of us still sitting as the van slowed to a stop. The girl across from me, who'd passed me the cider, rolled her eyes and sighed loudly. The driver wound down his window.

  'What's the matter?'

  '… reason to believe…' I heard a deep male voice say; the others started speaking and I only caught snatches of the rest.

  'But-'

  '… way to a trespassory assembly…'

  'Aw, come on, man-'

  '… serious disruption to a community…'

  '… not doing anything, we're not harming anybody.'

  '… justice act that you may be…'

  '… mean, what're we supposed to have done?'

  'Why aren't you out catching rapists or something?'

  '… back the way you came…'

  'Look, we're just going to visit friends, for fuck's sake!'

  '… hereby deemed to be…'

  '… unfair; I mean, it's just so unfair.'

  At that point the van's back doors were hauled open by two policemen wearing overalls and crash helmets carrying long batons. 'Right, come on; out!' one of them said.

  I got out with the others, amongst much complaining.

  'What appears to be the problem, officer?' I asked one of the men.

  'Stand over there,' we were told.

  Ahead on the road was a police van with blue lights flashing; we had been pulled in to a lay-by where other worn-looking vans, a couple of old cars and a decrepit coach had also been stopped. There were more police vans and cars perched on verges nearby and lots of police moving around, some dressed in ordinary uniforms, some in overalls.

  We stood on a grass verge while the van was briefly searched and the police checked its tyres and lights; our driver had to show some documents. Some of the vans and cars which had been stopped were made to turn round and head back the way they had come. Others seemed to be the objects of disputes between their occupants and the police; a few small groups of people, some of them in tears, tramped back up the road carrying sleeping bags, back packs and plastic bags. Meanwhile another tired-looking old minibus was stopped and more people forced to get out and stand on the grass. Smartish looking cars and other types of traffic were allowed to carry on past the roadblock.

  'Right; back the way you came,' we were told by a policeman after the police left our van and went on to the minibus. 'But look,' the man who'd been driving protested. 'We're just-'

  'You've got one very borderline tyre, son,' the policeman interrupted, pointing his finger in the young man's face. 'Want us to check the spare? If it's there? You got a jack? Yes? No? want us to check that tyre again? Very borderline, it was. You understand what I'm saying?'

  'Look-'

  'Fuckin' police state,' somebody muttered.

  'Get in the van, get out of here, get out of Avon. Understand?' the policeman said, poking the driver in the chest. 'And if I see you again, you're nicked.' He turned and walked away. This one's goin' back, Harry!' he shouted to another policeman, who nodded and then read the van's licence number into a hand-held radio.

  'Shit,' somebody said as we trooped back to the van.

  'I'm still going; we're still going, aren't we?'

  ''Snot far.'

  'Fuckin' is! Good ten miles.'

  'Bastards.'

  'Na; we'll get a bit closer. Cross the fields job.'

  I got my kit-bag out of the back of the van. 'Why exactly are they stopping everybody?' I asked.

  'They're the fucking pigs, man; it's their fucking job.'

  'The fucking Fascist Anti-Fun Police.'

  'Bastards!' somebody said from inside the van. 'They've spilled all the drink.' There were groans as people watched rivulets of pale yellow liquid trickle out the rear doors.

  'You not coming with us?' the girl who'd given me the cider asked.

  'Dudgeon Magna,' I said, pointing.

  'You'll be lucky,' one of the young men said.

  'Thank you. Go with God,' I said. They closed the doors. The van started up and turned round, heading back towards Wells. I waved to the people looking out the back windows and set my face to the west again.

  'And where do you think you're going?' asked an overalled, crash-helmeted police officer, standing directly in front of me.

  'The village of Dudgeon Magna,' I said. 'To see my cousin Morag Whit at Clissold's Health Farm and Country Club.'

  The officer looked me down and up. 'No you're not,' he said.

  'Ye
s I am,' I said, trying not to sound too indignant.

  'No,' he said, pressing me in the chest with his truncheon, 'you're not.'

  I looked down at the truncheon and put one of my feet out behind the other so I could better control my centre of balance. I leaned into the truncheon. 'Where I come from,' I said slowly, 'we treat guests with a little more courtesy than this.'

  'You're not a guest, love; you're just a fucking nuisance as far as we're concerned. Now fuck off back to Scotland or wherever it is you come from.' He pushed at me with the truncheon. My chest was hurting where he was pushing, but I was standing my ground.

  'Sir,' I said, looking him in the eyes beneath the pushed-up visor of the crash helmet. 'I'm not entirely clear why you're intercepting all these young people, but whatever it is you think they are going to do, I am not interested in it. I am going to visit my cousin at Clissold's Health Farm and Country Club.'

  The officer took the weight off the truncheon, then started tapping me in the chest with it in time to his words. 'And, I, just, told, you, you're, not,' he said, finally pushing me hard and forcing me to take a step backwards. 'Now do you want to turn round and fuck off or do you want to get into serious fucking trouble? Because I've just about fucking had it with you people.'

  I glared at him through narrowed eyes. I raised my head. 'I want to speak to your superior officer,' I said frostily.

  He looked at me for a moment. 'Right,' he said, standing to one side and motioning with his baton. 'This way.'

  'Thank you,' I said, taking a step past him.

  I think he tripped me to get me off balance; the next thing I knew he had me on the ground, my cheek ground into the damp, gritty tarmac of the lay-by, his knee in the small of my back and one of my arms pushed so far up my back I let out an involuntary shriek of pain; it felt like my arm was going to break. 'All right!' I screamed.

  'Dave,' he said calmly. 'Search this bag, will you?'