Iain Banks - Whit

Mr McIlone elected to remain at Luskentyre, which was, after all, his, though he insisted that Salvador accept his entire library as his parting gift. By this time there were five full converts, that is, people who had come to stay at Luskentyre, to work the land and fish the sea and be on hand to listen to our Founder's teachings. There were perhaps another dozen followers like the Fossils, who would come to stay (usually providing their own keep in some form or another) for a few weeks or months at a time. Two of the more ascetic full converts - apostles, as they called themselves by now - decided to stay at the farm on Harris after the gifting of High Easter Offerance and Grandfather, doubtless wisely, put no pressure on anybody to go or to stay.

Grandfather and the sisters had seen many photographs of High Easter Offerance and some silent ciné film too, projected onto a sheet in the parlour of our only other sympathiser local to Harris, whose house happened to have electric power. Still, it must have been an adventure for them when, in the spring of 1954, they finally packed all their belongings in the ex-mobile library - now ex-mobile shop - and drove to Stornoway, where the van was driven onto a huge net on the quay side and then winched aboard the ferry for the long, rolling journey to Kyle of Lochalsh. From there they headed slowly south on the narrow, winding roads of the day, away from the fractured geometries of the storm-flayed western isles to the comparatively balmy climes of central Scotland, and the abundant expanses of smooth-sloped hills, coiled river, breeze-rustled forests and sunny pastures of the Forth's broad run.

Mr and Mrs Woodbean had already moved out to the little turreted house over the iron bridge from the main farm. My Grandfather, the sisters, their children and assorted followers - including the Fossils, who had come along to help with the move - held a service and then a party to celebrate the relocation, installed themselves and their modest possessions in the mansion house and old farm, added Mr McIlone's library to the already impressive if under-used one which existed in the mansion house and in the weeks, months and years that followed, got down to the business of renovating the farm buildings and restoring the neglected fields to productivity.

Mrs Woodbean's brother had made a fortune after the War dealing in scrap and army surplus; he toyed with the idea of becoming a convert for a while and during this period either generously donated to the Order several pieces of potentially valuable ex-service equipment which would in many cases later be pressed into previously unthought-of practical applications, or used the farm as a dump for useless junk on which there was no quick profit to be made (depending who you listen to).

The only things he did provide which really were useful - I suppose the Deivoxiphone doesn't count - were a couple of short-wave radio sets mounted on sturdy, if wheel-less, army trailers. Mr McIlone was persuaded to accept one, and both were eventually persuaded to work, powered by wind generators. The radios provided a link between the two outposts of our Faith which was both fairly reliable and relatively secure (my Grandfather was starting to worry about the attentions of the government, and at one stage appeared to be convinced there was an entire Whitehall agency called the Department Of Religious Affairs, or DORA for short, which had been set up specifically to spy upon us and disrupt our every dealing, though he laughingly dismisses this as an exaggeration nowadays; a parable taken literally).

Of course, the radios had a very definite air of clutter and newfanglehood about them, but - perhaps because the radio provided such a perfect image of the human soul - Grandfather had always had a soft spot for the device, and was more inclined to suffer the presence of one of them than any other symptom of the material age.

The radio also provided a new aspect of - one might even say weapon for - our Faith when Grandfather awoke one morning from an obviously Divinely inspired dream with the idea of Radiomancy, whereby one tunes the radio at random, then turns it on, and uses the first words one hears - either immediately or as a result of sweeping gradually further and further along the frequencies to either side - as a means of prediction and divination.

So we were not so remote from our original home, but more importantly, with our relocation to this leafy arable alcove just off the central industrial belt, it was easier for potential converts to visit and make up their minds whether they wanted to Believe, or even to come and stay and Work and Believe. A slow trickle of people, young and old, mostly British but with the occasional foreigner, paid court to my Grandfather, listened to his teachings, read his Orthography , conversed with him and thought about their own lives, and - in some cases - decided that he had found the Truth, and so became Saved.

Grandfather thought up the Festival of Love in 1955. It occurred to him that it might not be wise to rely entirely on providence to provide Leapyearians, who were now seen very much as prophets and perhaps potential Messiahs. Indeed it might even be seen as impious to expect the Creator to ensure a child was born on any given 29th of February; it could be thought of as taking God for granted, which did not sound like a good idea.

Grandfather's Faith had embraced something very like the idea of free love from the start, thanks to Aasni and Zhobelia's generosity, and he had had revelations which certainly appeared to sanction the extension of his physical communing beyond the two sisters, and to allow his followers the same leeway with their partners, providing those concerned were agreeable and sufficiently enlightened to reject possessiveness and unreasoning, unholy jealousy (which had been Revealed to be a sin against God's bountiful and forgiving nature).

So, if the Order was to give nature a gentle helping hand with producing a child at the end of February in a leap year, it obviously made sense to encourage those ready, willing and able to assist in this matter to enjoy themselves as much as possible nine months earlier. Our Founder therefore decreed that the end of May before a leap year should be the time for a Festival; a Festival of Love in all its forms, including the holy communing of souls through the blessed glory of sexual congress. The month before should be a time of abstinence, when the Believers ought to deny themselves the most intense of pleasures in order to prepare for - and fully appreciate the advent of - the Festival itself.

Of course, the cynics, apostates and heretics - and those sad souls who hold it an article of their own perverted faiths that everybody else's motives can never be any better than their own - will point to the presence of several attractive young women amongst Grandfather's followers at this time as some sort of reason for our Founder's idea concerning the Festival. Well, we have grown to expect such shameful drivel from the ranks of the profoundly Unsaved, but it has been pointed out by no less than Salvador himself that even if the beauty he saw around him at that time did somehow lead his thoughts towards such a happy and Festive conclusion, what was that but an example of God using the Fair to inspire the Wise?

Not coincidentally, I think the first real attempt by the press to sabotage our cause occurred around this time, and confirmed to our OverSeer that he was right to shun publicity and refuse cameras access to the estate.

Aasni and Zhobelia seem not to have been discomfited by the concept of the Festival; they apparently felt secure in their joint relationship with Salvador and had devoted themselves both to the upbringing of their children and the upgrading of their home. They had, also, made friends with Mr and Mrs Woodbean and seemed to draw comfort from that as well. The sisters had not ceased to develop their culinary and condimentary skills; now that they were free of the need to travel the islands peddling their wares in the ancient van, they could devote even more time to the expansion and refinement of their range of sauces, pickles and chutneys.