Iain Banks: The Wasp Factory

I think my father used to work in a university for a few years after he graduated, and he might have invented something; he occasionally hints that he gets some sort of royalty from a patent or something, but I suspect the old hippy survives on whatever family wealth the Cauldhames still have secreted away.

The family has been in this part of Scotland for about two hundred years or more, from what I can gather, and we used to own a lot of the land around here. Now all we have is the island, and that's pretty small, and hardly even an island at low tide. The only other remnant of our glorious past is the name of Porteneil's hot-spot, a grubby old pub called the Cauldhame Arms where I go sometimes now, though still under age of course, and watch some of the local youths trying to be punk bands. That was where I met and still meet the only person I'd call a friend; Jamie the dwarf, whom I let sit on my shoulders so he can see the bands.

"Well, I don't think he'll get this far. They'll pick him up," my father said again, after a long and brooding silence. He got up to rinse his glass. I hummed to myself, something I always used to do when I wanted to smile or laugh, but thought the better of it. My father looked at me. "I'm going to the study. Don't forget to lock up, all right?"

"Okey-doke," I said, nodding.

"Goodnight."

My father left the kitchen. I sat and looked at my trowel, Stoutstroke. Little grains of dry sand stuck to it, so I brushed them off. The study. One of my few remaining unsatisfied ambitions is to get into the old man's study. The cellar I have at least seen, and been in occasionally; I know all the rooms on the ground floor and the second; the loft is my domain entirely and home of the Wasp Factory, no less; but that one room on the first floor I don't know, I have never even seen inside.

I do know he has some chemicals in there, and I suppose he does experiments or something, but what the room looks like, what he actually does in there, I have no idea. All I've ever got out of it are a few funny smells and the tap-tap of my father's stick.

I stroked the long handle of the trowel, wondering if my father had a name for that stick of his. I doubted it. He doesn't attach the same importance to them as I do. I know they are important.

I think there is a secret in the study. He had hinted as much more than once, just vaguely, just enough to entice me so that I want to ask what, so that he knows that I want to ask. I don't ask, of course, because I wouldn't get any worthwhile answer. If he did tell me anything it would be a pack of lies, because obviously the secret wouldn't be a secret any more if he told me the truth, and he can feel, as I do, that with my increasing maturity he needs all the holds over me he can get; I'm not a child any more. Only these little bits of bogus power enable him to think he is in control of what he sees as the correct father-son relationship. It's pathetic really, but with his little games and his secrets and his hurtful remarks he tries to keep his security intact.

I leaned back in the wooden chair and stretched. I like the smell of the kitchen. The food, and the mud on our wellingtons, and sometimes the faint tang of cordite coming up from the cellar all give me a good, tight, thrilling feel when I think about them. It smells different when it's been raining and our clothes are wet. In the winter the big black stove pumps out heat fragrant with driftwood or peat, and everything steams and the rain hammers against the glass. Then it has a comfortable, closed-in feeling, making you feel cosy, like a great big cat with its tail curled round itself. Sometimes I wish we had a cat. All I've ever had was a head, and that the seagulls took.

I went to the toilet, down the corridor off the kitchen, for a crap. I didn't need a pee because I'd been pissing on the Poles during the day, infecting them with my scent and power.

I sat there and thought about Eric, to whom such an unpleasant thing happened. Poor twisted bugger. I wondered, as I have often wondered, how I would have coped. But it didn't happen to me. I have stayed here and Eric was the one who went away and it all happened somewhere else, and that's all there is to it. I'm me and here's here.

I listened, wondering if I could hear my father. Perhaps he had gone straight to bed. He often sleeps in the study rather than in the big bedroom on the second floor, where mine is. Maybe that room holds too many unpleasant (or pleasant) memories for him. Either way, I couldn't hear any snoring.

I hate having to sit down in the toilet all the time. With my unfortunate disability I usually have to, as though I was a bloody woman, but I hate it. Sometimes in the Cauldhame Arms I stand up at the urinal, but most of it ends up running down my hands or legs.

I strained. Plop splash. Some water came up and hit my bum, and that was when the phone went.

"Shit," I said, and then laughed at myself. I cleaned my arse quickly and pulled my trousers up, pulling the chain, too, and then waddling out into the corridor, zipping up. I ran up the broad stairs to the first-floor landing, where our only phone is. I'm forever on at my father to get more phones put in, but he says we don't get called often enough to warrant extensions. I got to the phone before whoever was calling rang off. My father hadn't appeared.

"Hello," I said. It was a call-box.

"Skraw- aak !" screamed a voice at the other end. I held the receiver away from my ear and looked at it, scowling. Tinny yells continued to come from the earpiece. When they stopped I put my ear back to it.

"Porteneil 53l," I said coldly.

"Frank! Frank! It's me. Me! Hello there! Hello!"

"Is there an echo on this line or are you saying everything twice?" I said. I could recognise Eric's voice.

"Both! Ha ha ha ha ha!"

"Hello, Eric. Where are you?"

"Here! Where are you?"

"Here."

"If we're both here, why are we bothering with the phone?"

"Tell me where you are before your money runs out."

"But if you're here you must know. Don't you know where you are?" He started to giggle.

I said calmly: "Stop being silly, Eric."

"I'm not being silly. I'm not telling you where I am; you'll only tell Angus and he'll tell the police and they'll take me back to the fucking hospital."

"Don't use four-letter words. You know I don't like them. Of course I won't tell Dad."

"'Fucking' is not a four-letter word. It's… it's a seven-letter word. Isn't that your lucky number?"

"No. Look, will you tell me where you are? I want to know."

"I'll tell you where I am if you'll tell me what your lucky number is."

"My lucky number is e ."

" That's not a number. That's a letter."

"It is a number. It's a transcendental number: 2.718 —»

"That's cheating. I meant an integer."

"You should have been more specific," I said, then sighed as the pips sounded and Eric eventually put more money in. "Do you want me to call you back?"

"Ho-ho. You aren't getting it out of me that easy. How are you, anyway?"

"I'm fine. How are you?"

"Mad, of course," he said, quite indignantly. I had to smile.

"Look, I'm assuming you're coming back here. If you are, please don't burn any dogs or anything, OK?"

"What are you talking about? It's me. Eric. I don't burn dogs!" He started to shout. "I don't burn fucking dogs! What the hell do you think I am? Don't accuse me of burning fucking dogs, you little bastard! Bastard !"

"All right, Eric, I'm sorry, I'm sorry," I said as quickly as I could. "I just want you to be OK; be careful. Don't do anything to antagonise people, you know? People can be awful sensitive…"

"Well…," I could hear him say. I listened to him breathing, then his voice changed. "Yeah, I'm coming back home. Just for a short while, to see how you both are. I suppose it's just you and the old man?"