Whit

by Iain Banks

  I started cleaning dishes. Anything to be busy. I'd been right about the washing-up basin. Topee was back a few minutes later. He stared at the washing-up suds as though he had never seen such a phenomenon before, a thesis the state of the kitchen did nothing to contradict. 'Oh, yeah! Like, well done, Is!'

  'What did your Director of Studies say?' I asked him.

  'We need a notaphilist,' he said, grinning.

  'A what?'

  'A notaphilist,' he repeated. 'Apparently there's one in Wellington Street.' He glanced at his watch. 'Open till noon on Saturdays. Reckon we can make it.'

  * * *

  I found it quite easy to drag myself away from the washing-up. We caught a bus into the city centre and found the address in Wellington Street, a little basement shop under a grand, tall Victorian office building of recently cleaned fawn sandstone.

  H. Womersledge, Numismatist and Notaphilist, said the peeling painted sign. The place was pokey and dark and smelled of old books and something metallic. A bell jangled as we entered. I tried to convince myself that these were not really retail premises. There were glass cases, counters and tall display cabinets everywhere, all full of coins, medals and bank-notes, the latter held in little transparent plastic stands or folders like photographic albums.

  A middle-aged man appeared from the back of the shop. I'd expected some little old bent-over octogenarian sporting a patina of dandruff and dust, but this fellow was my side of fifty, smoothly plump, and dressed in a white polo-neck top and cream slacks.

  'Morning,' he said.

  'Yo,' said Topee, bouncing from one foot to the other. The man looked unimpressed.

  I tipped my hat. 'Good morning, sir.' I brought out the bank-note and placed it on the glass counter between us, over dully gleaming silver coins and colourfully ribboned medals. 'I wondered what you could tell me about this…' I said.

  He picked up the note delicately, held it up to the dim light from the one small window, then switched on a tiny but powerful table lamp and studied the note briefly.

  'Well, it's pretty self-explanatory, really,' he said. 'Ten-pound note, Royal Scot Linen, July 'forty-eight.' He shrugged. 'They were produced in this form from May 'thirty-five to January 'fifty-three, when the RSL was taken over by the Royal Bank.' He turned the note over a couple of times, handling it the way I imagined a card-sharp did a card. 'Quite an ornate note, for the time. It was actually designed by a man called Mallory who was later hanged for murdering his wife, in nineteen forty-two.' He gave us a suitably wintry smile. 'I suppose you want to know how much it's worth.'

  'I imagined it was worth ten pounds,' I said. 'If it was still legal tender.'

  'Not legal tender,' the man said, grinning and shaking his head. 'Worth about forty quid, mint, which this isn't. If you were selling I could give you fifteen, but even that's only because I like round numbers.'

  'Hmm,' I said. 'Well, perhaps not, then.'

  I stood, looking down at the note, just letting the time pass. The man turned the note over on the counter one more time.

  'Well, then,' I said, after Topee had started to get agitated at my side. 'Thank you, sir.'

  'You're welcome,' the man said, after a moment's hesitation.

  I picked up the note and folded it back inside my pocket. 'Good day,' I said, tipping my hat.

  'Yeah,' the man said, frowning, as I turned and walked to the door, followed by Topee. I opened the door, jangling the bell again. 'Ah, wait a minute,' the man said. I turned and looked back.

  He waved one hand, as though rubbing out something on an invisible screen between us. 'No, no, I'm not going to offer you more or anything; that's all it's worth, really, but… could I have another look at it?'

  'Of course.' I went back to the counter and handed him the note again. He frowned at it. 'Mind if I take a copy of this?' he asked.

  'Will it be harmed?' I asked.

  He smiled tolerantly. 'No, it won't.'

  'All right.'

  'Won't be a minute.' He disappeared into the back of the shop. There were a series of quiet, mechanical noises. He was back a moment later, with the note and a copy of both its sides on a large sheet of paper. He handed me the note again. 'You got a phone number I can reach you at?'

  'Yes,' I said. 'Topee, do you mind… ? '

  'Eh? What? Oh! Like, hey, no; no, on you go. Pas de probleme.'

  I gave the man Topee's phone number.

  'Now what?' Topee asked on the street outside.

  'Army records, and old newspapers.'

  * * *

  There are occasions when I find pieces of technology I can't help liking. The fiche reader and built-in copying machine that I was directed to at the Mitchell Library proved to be one such device. It was like a large vertically oriented television set screen, but was really just a sort of projector, throwing onto the screen the highly magnified images of old newspapers, documents, journals, ledgers and other papers which had been photographed and placed -hundreds at a time - on pieces of thin, laminated plastic. In this manner, many years' worth of broadsheet newspapers that might have filled a room could be condensed into a small filing box that one could carry comfortably with one hand.

  By working two small wheels, one could manipulate the glass bed the fiches rested upon and so rove at will across the hundreds of pages recorded on each plastic sheet. When one had found a sheet one wanted to record, all that had to be done was to press a button, and the contents of the screen would be transferred by a photocopying process to a sheet of ordinary paper.

  I suspect it was something about the mechanical nature of the whole business - despite the machine's obvious reliance on electrical power - that attracted me. If you held the riches up to the light you could just make out the tiny shapes of the newspapers, easily identifying large headlines and photographs by the black and grey blocks they made on the white surface. It was obvious, in other words, that the information was physically there, albeit in microscopically reduced form, not macerated into digits or stripes of magnetism plastered on a bit of tape or a little brown disk and intrinsically unreadable without the intervention of a machine.

  The fiches could probably be used without the machine, if one had a bright light and a very strong magnifying glass, and that seemed to me to define the limit of acceptable technology; Luskentyrians have traditionally had an almost instinctive suspicion of things which boast of having few or no moving parts. It makes us incompatible, as a rule, with electronics, but this device seemed just about tolerable. I was sure Brother Indra would like this machine. I thought again of Allan, using the portable phone in the office storeroom, and felt my teeth grind as I read the ancient headlines I had come here to inspect.

  I was looking at old copies of Scottish and British newspapers from 1948. I glanced at one or two from the early months of the year, but was concentrating on the second half of the year. I was not entirely sure what it was I might find; I was just looking for something that caught my eye.

  I sat alone at the machine, having given Brother Topee the task of finding out how one might investigate an individual who had been in the British Army; he had pointed me towards the Mitchell Library from an army recruitment centre in Sauchiehall Street. I had left him standing in a queue there; I was hoping he wouldn't join up by mistake, though with those earrings he was probably safe.

  I had plenty of newspapers to choose from: The Herald, Scotsman, Courier, Dispatch, Mirror, Evening Times, Times, Sketch… I started with the Scotsman, for no better reason than that was the paper Mr Warriston took, and I had once picked it up and surreptitiously read a few pages on the first occasion I'd visited his house in Dunblane.

  I read of the assassination of Gandhi, the formation of Israel, the Berlin airlift, Harry S. Truman elected President in the United States, the founding of the two Korean republics, the austerity Olympics in London, continuing rationing in Britain and the abdication of Queen Wilhelmina in Holland.

  What I was looking for were shipwrecks, bank robbe
ries, mysterious disappearances, people being washed overboard from troopships or going missing from army bases. After a quick look through a selection of months, I decided to restrict my search to that of September 1948 initially, reckoning that the chances were that whatever I was looking for had taken place then. I had got to the last September issue of the Scotsman without success when Topee appeared in the little alcove off the upper gallery where the fiche reading machine was situated.

  'Any luck?' I asked.

  He sat down on another chair, breathing hard as though he'd been running. 'No; it's been fucking privatised, man.'

  'What? The army?'

  'No; the records. All the armed forces' records. Used to be some civil service department, but now it's something called "Force Facts plc" and you have to pay for each inquiry and they're not open over the weekend anyway. Hilarious, eh? Total.' He shook his head. 'How about you?'

  'Nothing yet. Done the Scotsman; about to start on the Glasgow Herald. If you could take the right-hand side of the screen while I read the left, we'll get through this a lot quicker,' I told him, making room for his seat.

  He scraped in beside me, glancing soulfully at his watch. 'The guys will be watching the jazz by now,' he said in a small voice.

  'Topee,' I said. 'This is important. If you don't feel you can devote your full concentration to the task, just say so and run off to play with your pals.'

  'No, no,' he said, pushing back his hair and sitting forward in his chair to peer intently at the screen.

  I took the last Scotsman fiche off the glass plate and put the first Glasgow Herald fiche on. Topee continued to stare at the screen. 'Is?'

  'What?'

  'What am I looking for, anyway?'

  'Shipwrecks.'

  'Shipwrecks.'

  'Well, maybe not actual shipwrecks,' I said, recalling that Zhobelia had said there hadn't been any shipwrecks at the time. 'But something like shipwrecks.'

  Topee grimaced, looking up at the ceiling. 'Right. Cool. Anything else?'

  'Yes. Anything that rings a bell.'

  'Eh?'

  'Anything that sounds familiar. Anything that sounds like it might be linked to the Order.'

  He looked at me. 'You mean you don't know what we're looking for.'

  'Not exactly,' I admitted, scanning my half of the display. 'If I knew exactly what it was there wouldn't be any need to look.'

  'Right,' he said.'… So I've got to look for something, like, really carefully, but I don't know what it is I'm looking for except it might be something like a shipwreck, that isn't?'

  'That's right.'

  From the corner of my eye, I could see that Topee continued to study me. I half expected him to rise from his chair and walk out, but instead he just turned back to the screen and pulled his seat closer. 'Wow,' he chuckled. 'Like, Zen!'

  An hour went by. Topee swore he was paying attention but he always claimed to be finished at the same time as me, and I know I read very quickly indeed. Still, I had calculated that we would be lucky to finish all the records of all the papers for September 1948 by the time the library closed, so I had no choice for now but to trust his word. After that first hour, Topee started humming and whistling and making little sibilant noises with his tongue, lips and teeth.

  I suspected it was jazz.

  The next hour grew to middle age.

  I tried with all my might to concentrate, but occasionally I would drift away from my task and start reliving the previous night, hearing Zhobelia tell me in her matter-of-fact way that what I had thought a personal miracle - a blessed affliction, one wise wound upon another - was something I shared through time with generations of my female ancestors, including her. Did that make any more sense of what I felt when I envisioned something? I had no idea. It put my visions in a sort of context but it made the experience no less mysterious. Did it mean anything that God chose to order Their miracles in this manner? I could not shake off the feeling that if there was one thing Salvador had got right it was that we are not even capable yet of understanding the purpose God has in mind for us. We can only struggle through, doing the best we can and trying neither to hide behind ignorance nor over-estimate the reach of our knowledge. I kept having to drag myself back to the task in hand, trawling the past for the key to the present.

  And found it.

  It was in the Glasgow Courier, dated Thursday, 30th September, 1948. It was as well I was sitting down; the experience of dizziness induced by a familial revelation did not seem to be a condition I was becoming inured to, despite the frequency with which it had swept through me in the past few days. My sight seemed to go a bit swimmy for a while, but I just sat and waited for it to clear.

  I read on, while Topee read, or pretended to read, beside me.

  Civilian and military police are today seeking Private Moray Black (28) a private of the Dumbartonshire Fusiliers, who is wanted for questioning in connection with an incident at Ruchill Barracks, Glasgow, on Monday night when it is understood an attack took place on a junior officer in the Pay Corps and an amount of money was subsequently found to be missing. Private Black, who is described as five feet ten inches in height and weighing eleven stone five pounds with brown hair, is known to have connections in the Govan area…

  The words seemed to dance in front of me. I let them settle down

  … Mother believed to be an unmarried textile worker in Paisley… brought up by his grandmother, a member of the Grimsby Brethren, a charismatic sect… gang member… alleged racketeer during War… national service…

  'Finished!' Topee said.

  I turned and smiled, wondering that Topee did not hear my heart thudding in my chest.

  'Right,' I said, and put the fiche back in its box. 'Topee, could you ask a librarian whether it is permitted to have a glass of water or a cup of tea here, at the desk? I'm thirsty, but I don't want to leave…'

  'Yup!' he said, and bounded out of his seat as though released by a spring.

  I put the fiche back in the machine and took a couple of copies of it while he was away. I quickly searched the other papers. They had the same story, though the Courier seemed to have the most detail; their reporter had talked exclusively to Private Black's grandmother. I went to another shelf and selected the box with October's newspapers in it.

  On Saturday the 2nd of October there was another report in the Courier to the effect that Black was still being hunted. The junior officer who had been attacked in the incident was recovering in hospital, concussed.

  On the same page, a familiar word attracted my eye; it turned out to be the name of a ship. It appeared in a report which stated that the SS Salvador, a general cargo vessel of 11,500 tons registered in Buenos Aires, which had sailed from Govan docks on the morning of the 28th September bound for Quebec, New York, Colon and Guayaquil, had encountered heavy weather off the Outer Hebrides on the night of the 30th, and suffered structural damage. The ship was now limping back to Glasgow. Amongst its cargo had been railway carriages and other rolling stock, bound for South America. Several carriages lashed to its deck had been washed overboard during the storm.

  My God.

  I read the article about the SS Salvador again, and looked up at the ceiling.

  My Grandfather was washed ashore after a train wreck?

  * * *

  We got back to Topee's flat. Stephen reported, drunkenly, that there had been a message from a Mister Wormsludge - har har - asking me to ring his home number.

  I rang Mr Womersledge. He said the serial number on the ten-pound note I had shown him was one of a consecutive batch which had been stolen from the Army Pay Corps in September 1948. The note might be more valuable than he'd said originally, and he could now offer me fifty pounds for it. I said, Thank you, I'd think about it, and put down the phone.

  As the final teetering keystone of my belief in my Grandfather finally tumbled down about me and the world I had known seemed to fall away like unseasonable sprink before the sudden thaw, Topee asked, Hey, w
ere we, like, ready to go out for a drink, like, yet?

  I - of course - said, Yes.

  CHAPTER TWENTY - SEVEN

  I had thought that I might find release from my tormented thoughts in alcoholic oblivion, but it was not to be.

  After making another couple of phone calls, I duly went out that evening with Topee and his pals, but as we sat quickly drinking beer in a bar in Byres Road - apparently the natural and normal preparation before a dance at something called the Queen Margaret Union - I found myself slipping behind in the beer-drinking, unable to stop myself thinking about the revelation of the inherited, bizarrely serial nature of my Gift and the treachery and mendacity of those close to me.

  Barely had I started to come to terms with the betrayal of my own brother when I discovered that my Grandfather was a thief and a liar as well as a potential rapist; that particular scrofulously scabrous cat was scarcely out of the bag when it was revealed - in an almost off-hand manner! - that I was just the latest in a long line of visionaries, faith healers and mediums, dating back to who-knew-when!

  Our whole Order had been constructed on a base more dangerous and shifting than the sands of Luskentyre themselves; everybody had been lying to everybody else! Far from being a single eruption of poison in our placid and serene environment, Allan's lies and machinations suddenly started to look like an unremarkable and even predictable continuance of a vein of evil and mendacity that had been intertwined with the roots of our Faith from the very start, and indeed which predated it. Was there no foundation of my life on which I could still rely?

  I tried to comfort myself with the thought that the Community and the Order had some intrinsic merit independent of their genesis. In a sense, all I had discovered - about my Grandfather, at any rate - made no difference. The proof of our Faith's worth lay in the hearts and minds of all of us who believed, and in the commitment and dedication we displayed. Why should good not come out of evil? Was it not a sign of the ineffable bounteousness of God that They wrought the gold that was our Faith from the base and toxic ore that had been my Grandfather's violence and thievery and my grandmother's and my great-aunt's deceptions and manipulations?