Iain Banks - Whit

Of course, as soon as the instrument had been raised to its position of prominence I lost all interest in it, but there it sat, perched on its octagonal wooden rostrum to the south of the farm, aimed at the heavens like an olive-green multi-barrel blunderbuss. There was enough space on the decking around it for sunbathing or just sitting looking out over the gardens, woods and distant hills, and that was where I'd sat, legs dangling over the platform edge, arms flat on the platform's lower rail, four years earlier, talking to Morag.

'The Pendicles of Collymoon,' she said.

'What?'

'The Pendicles of Collymoon,' she repeated. 'It's a place. I saw it on the map.'

'Oh, Collymoon,' I said, placing the name. 'Yes; up near Buchlyvie.' Buchlyvie is a wee village about a dozen miles west from the Community, due south of Scotland's only lake, the Lake of Menteith. In between is Collymoon, a scatter of houses on the north shore of the Forth east of Flanders Moss. I'd noticed it on a map too, and had passed it once, on one of my long-range walks a couple of years earlier. It was a pleasant enough situation, but nothing special.

Morag lay back in the sunlight, gazing up at the sky, or perhaps the Deivoxiphone's preposterous trumpets. 'Don't you think that's the most wonderful name, though? Don't you think that's just the most romantic name you ever heard?' (I shrugged.) 'I think it is,' she said, nodding emphatically. 'The Pendicles of Collymoon,' she said once more, with languorous grace. 'It sounds like a romantic novel, doesn't it?'

'Probably a hopelessly slushy one,' I said.

'Oh, you're so unromantic,' Morag said, slapping my hip.

'I'm not,' I protested awkwardly, 'I just have a higher threshold of… romanticism, that's all.' I lay down on my side, one arm supporting my head, facing her. I envied Morag her shiningly auburn hair; it was a billowed halo on the sun-bleached planks around her head; a wild red river sparkling in the sun. 'It takes more than a few words on a map to make me go all gooey.'

'Who's all gooey? I didn't say I was-all gooey.'

'I bet you imagined some dishy guy coming from the Pendicles of Collymoon-'

' Dishy ?' Morag said, her face screwing up as she started giggling. ' Dishy ?' she laughed. Her breasts shook under her T-shirt as she chortled. I felt my face go red.

'Well, hunky , then,' I said, pinching her arm to no effect. 'Sorry if I'm not up with the latest slang; we live a sheltered life here.' I pinched harder.

'Aow!' she said, and slapped my hand away. She raised her head up, turning on her side to face me. 'Anyway,' she smiled, 'what does make you romantic?' She made a show of looking about. 'Any of the guys here?'

I looked away; now it was my turn to lie down on my back and stare up at the sky.

'Not really,' I admitted, frowning.

She was silent for a while, then she tapped me on the nose with one finger. 'Maybe you should get out more, cuz.'

I took her finger in my hand and held it and turned to look at her, my heart suddenly beating wildly. She looked puzzled for a moment, as I gently squeezed her finger and gazed into her eyes, then gave a small, perhaps regretful smile. She took her finger gently from my grasp and said, 'Oooh…' very softly, nodding. 'Really?'

I looked away, crossing my arms across my chest. 'Oh, I don't know,' I said miserably. I felt like crying all of a sudden, but refused to. 'I have so many feelings, so much… passion inside me, but it never really seems to come out the way it should. It's like…' I sighed, struggling to find the right words. 'It's like I feel I ought to be interested in boys, or if not in boys then in girls, but I almost have to force myself to feel anything. Sometimes I think I do feel something , like I'm normal, but then…' I shook my head. 'I do the laying on of hands, and it's like all that passion is… earthed then, like lightning.' I looked imploringly at her. 'Please don't say anything to anybody.'

'Don't worry,' she said, and winked. 'You'd be amazed at just how discreet I am. But listen; love is all that matters. That's what I think. Love and romance. People get all worked up about things they think are unnatural or perverted, but the only thing that's really unnatural and perverted is thinking there's something wrong with people loving each other.' She patted my shoulder again. 'You do what you think's right, Is; it's your life.'

I turned and looked at her. I still hadn't cried, but I had to sniff a bit, and blink to clear my eyes. I cleared my throat. 'It doesn't always feel that way,' I told her.

'Well, look, whatever it is you feel, if it doesn't feel like sex, then it isn't. All right, you're feeling something , and maybe it is to do with love, but I don't think it's necessarily got that much to do with sex. If that's the way it is, don't try to make it into something it isn't just because you feel it's expected of you.'

I thought about this, then said, 'Yes, but what about the Festival and everything?'

She frowned, and for a while I was able to look into her handsome, firm face. Then she said, 'Oh,' and took a deep breath and lay back beside me, looking up at the strange device above us. 'Oh, yes, the Festival, and everything,' she said. 'There's that.'

'There certainly is,' I said unhappily, lying back.

I sat in the plastic-fragranced car and watched the yellow lights of towns roll past in the distance; suddenly bright white lights strobing through the carriages ahead announced a train passing in the opposite direction. I ducked down to lie on the seat while the locomotive thundered past, then sat up again when the train had disappeared up the track heading north.

A moment's dizziness afflicted me as I sat back up, the immediate memory of the white lights flickering through the sides of the wagons ahead seeming to reflect and multiply inside my mind as though my brain was transparent and my skull a mirror; my heart raced and my mouth tasted of something metallic.

The moment passed and I returned to my thoughts of my cousin, realising, as though to sum up, that I had another reason for wanting Morag to come back to us; if she did not return and be our Guest of Honour at the Festival then I might be expected to step into the breach (not to mention having somebody step into mine, so to speak).

That was not a prospect I relished.

Sleep finally claimed me around the border, I would guess, and I dreamed of High Easter Offerance and our Community, and in my dream I was a ghost, floating through the farm's busy courtyard, calling to everybody I knew, but unheeded, unheard, somehow exiled.

I awoke with the dawn. I yawned and stretched, then peeked over the top of the windowsill. The train was passing through damp, flat countryside which I guessed was in the middle of England. I took a drink of water then snoozed some more. Later I sat up and watched the view while eating a light breakfast of cheese and pickle sandwiches and consulting my map of London.

I detrained at a red signal north of Hornsey, climbed a low embankment, relieved myself behind a bush, then scrambled over a brick wall by a bridge and dropped onto a pavement in front of a surprised-looking Indian lady. I tipped my hat to her and strolled away, feeling distinctly pleased with myself at getting to London in such a sanctified but relatively effortless manner. I took it as a good omen that the first person I should encounter down south had been another person of sub-continental origin.

It was mid-morning; half past eight according to the clock displayed in the corner of a programme playing multitudinously in a TV-shop window. Time for some Back Bussing.

Back Bussing is a way of minimising travel expenditure which we have used on buses for decades and which can occasionally be employed on other forms of transport. It consists of getting on the bus and asking the conductor - preferably in a strange, alien accent - for a ticket for a stop in the opposite direction one is travelling in. On being informed one is heading the wrong way, it is vital to look most confused and be extremely apologetic. Usually one will then be allowed to get off (almost invariably without paying) at the next stop along the route, from where one may begin to repeat the process until one arrives at one's destination.