Iain Banks - Whit

I retreated to Morningside, using as many out-of-the-way routes as I could, including one snicket, or footpath, charmingly called Lover's Loan. En route I saw several cars with signs in the back saying 'Child On Board', and was reminded, by now with more amusement than embarrassment, of my first trip to Edinburgh three years earlier, when I had proudly pointed out to Sister Jess - who was one of my attendants for that trip - that given the number of people so advertising the fact their offspring were not deigning to sit on soft automobile seats, our Order obviously had many converts in the city.

While taking tea at the Fossils' that afternoon I heard the distant sound of a diesel locomotive, and was reminded of the train which had passed me the night before as I'd been travelling along the nearby cutting. Thereafter I went out and walked around, trying to recall exactly what the cars I had seen last night on the freight train had looked like. Happily, I have a good memory and the cars proved common. I went to the nearest car dealership and inquired about where Ford Escorts were constructed, then spent some considerable time in the area around the junction where Morningside Road and Comiston Road join, watching freight trains. The trains came from the west through the abandoned station immediately to the west of the bridge carrying the crossroads, or through the shallow, tree-lined cutting just to the east, which had been the point at which I'd struck out for Gertie Fossil's the night before. The trains were few and far between, which made it easy to memorise their times via the old clock tower near the junction, but I became concerned that I might become conspicuous, and so returned to the Fossils' and borrowed a wooden tray, a length of wallpaper which I tore into tray-sized rectangles, and a thick black crayon Gertie used to write messages for the milkman; thereafter I returned to the railway and the road junction, and made a series of sketches of the buildings while I watched for passing trains. I was relieved to see one pass westwards loaded with cars at approximately the same time as the one I had hidden from yesterday.

Finding no regularity in the trains' schedule from hour to hour, but having formulated a plan which might work if they kept to the same timetable on a day-to-day basis, I returned to the home of Gertie Fossil and another ceremonial supper followed by a service, which I trust I conducted in a manner my Grandfather would have approved of. The service went well enough, I think (despite the fact that Lucius is profoundly tone deaf and when it comes to singing in tongues can only mumble in them).

Still thinking about my plan, and having come to the conclusion that it possessed the flaw of being difficult to carry out in daylight or even around dusk, I walked back to the road junction yet again, and was rewarded with the sight of a train that would suit me perfectly.

The following night found me crouched in some bushes on what had once been the platform of Morningside station, my jacket buttoned up so that no trace of my white shirt showed, my hat on so that my face was in shadow and my pale kit-bag concealed behind me. A light rain was falling from clouds smudged orange with the city's glare. I was getting wet. Above and behind me, late-night traffic roared and hissed on the road junction where I had spent so much time yesterday. I estimated that I had been waiting for almost half an hour, and was beginning to worry that somebody might already have noticed the large cardboard box I had thrown over the train signals further up the track near the next bridge to the east, where the railway passes under Braid Avenue.

The box had apparently once contained a washing machine; I had found it in a skip a couple of streets away, carried it to the cutting, made sure there was nobody about, thrown it over the jagged railings and climbed after it, then fought my way through brambles and bushes and heaved the box over the signals. I wondered how long it would take for somebody to spot this and report it to the relevant authorities. Luckily no trains had yet passed in the opposite direction whose drivers might have noticed, but I was becoming concerned.

I had bade the Fossils farewell after another solemn supper and another reverential washing of my feet by Gertie. She gave me food and water for my journey; Lucius mumbled and spluttered until hit firmly on the back of the neck by his mother, whereupon he explained that the cravat he was holding out to me - and which I had been about to bless - was a present.

I accepted Gertie's food and Lucius's cravat and thanked them both. I had already packed the map of London I'd asked to borrow. I presented them with the drawings of the buildings around the road junction and told them they could keep the wooden staff. Lucius bubbled with gratitude; Gertie put her hand to her chest and seemed about to have a seizure. She thereupon fell at my feet, and so I exited the house, backwards, as I had entered it, with Sister Gertie patting my boots.

Walking through the drizzle to the railway track and the abandoned station had been oddly relieving.

I heard a train rumbling towards me along the cutting to the west. I gripped my kit-bag and flexed my legs, which had become stiff squatting in the same position for so long.

Small white lights appeared in the black cutting and the diesel noise swelled; the dark mass of the loco rumbled past; I could make out the driver, sitting staring ahead in the yellow-lit cab. The engine hauled empty open wagons similar to those I had seen the night before at around this time, and which I guessed I had seen twice before in addition, on each occasion loaded with new cars. The locomotive roared under the bridge supporting the road junction, its exhaust billowing around me, stinking. The train of wagons flowed clatteringly past, and for a second I thought my plan had foundered, then with a squeal and a cacophony of metallic shrieks the train began to slow.

I almost jumped up then, but waited for the wagons to draw to a stop before walking calmly out of the bushes to where the third-last wagon lay, stationary. I stepped onto it from the weed-strewn platform as easily as a fare-paying passenger into a normal carriage.

I squinted down the girdered length of the train towards the rear, then walked in that direction, jumping from one wagon to the next. On the final wagon there was a single automobile, sitting right at the rear. I went up to it. Its bodywork looked dull and mat, and felt as if it was covered in wax; there was a large, pale, chalky-looking X scrawled on its bonnet and a sheaf of paperwork taped to the inside of the windscreen. I tried the passenger door and discovered it was unlocked.

I looked up into the drizzle. 'Praise be,' I said, smiling, and would have whooped for joy had I not been afraid of revealing my presence. 'Praise be indeed,' I said, laughing quietly, and jumped inside, my heart rejoicing.

A minute later, the train gave a series of jerks and started moving forward again, gathering speed and taking me away from Edinburgh, heading south.

The day after the great storm, Aasni and Zhobelia scraped my Grandfather clean of tea and lard and took him to the farm of Mr Eoin McIlone, the free-thinker who had offered shelter to the sisters before. On this occasion he also offered succour to their storm-tossed foundling, for whom he made up the bed in what he called his spare room, though in truth it was more like a study or even a library; the walls were lined with mismatched bookcases and rickety shelving nailed to the wooden walls, all supporting Mr McIlone's considerable collection of books on philosophy, politics, theology and radical thought.

My Grandfather continued to drift in and out of something between a fever and a coma for most of the next few days, rambling incoherently and moaning. The local doctor had been summoned and had judged Grandfather too ill to move. He had taken the zhlonjiz poultice off my Grandfather's head and had applied a proper dressing, which Aasni had removed and replaced with a fresh poultice the instant she heard the doctor's car start up again. It took Grandfather some days to come fully round. The name of Mr McIlone's farm was Luskentyre.