Iain Banks - Whit

'Well,' Sophi said, crinkling her nose as she looked thoughtful, 'maybe that's it; you all have him to turn to but he only has God. You know; tough at the top, and all that. Buck stops with him, sort of thing.'

'He has all of us to turn to,' I said, though I saw what she meant.

'Anyway, holy men are still men. Perhaps he's just got used to having any of the women in the Order he wants.'

'But it's not like that!' I protested.

'Oh, come on, Isis. It's not far off it.'

'But there's never been any coercion. It's just natural; ours is a faith of love, in all its forms. We're not ashamed of that. And he is - has been… still is, I suppose - an attractive man; charismatic. Everybody finds him so; women have always been attracted to him. I mean, they still are,' I said. I ran my fingers through my hair. 'Lordy, he has no need of me.'

'Forbidden fruit, maybe?' Sophi suggested.

'Oh, I don't know!' I wailed, and fell upon her breast once more, clutching at her perfumed warmth. 'Morag avoiding me, Grandfather pursuing me; somebody traducing me…'

'Introducing you?' she said, sounding confused.

'Traducing me; defaming me. The whole thing with the zhlonjiz .'

'Oh.'

'What's happening to my life?' I said. 'What's going on?'

Sophi shrugged, and I could feel her shaking her head.

The telephone rang then, out in the hall. We listened to it. 'Not one of yours, then,' she said after the seventh ring. She patted my back. 'Better get it; might be Dad wanting a lift back…'

She went out to the hall.

'Hi?' Then a pause. 'Hello?… Hello?'

She put her head round the edge of the door, looking in at me and grinning, the telephone handset to one ear.

'Don't know what…' she said, then frowned. She shook her head, long hair making a sine wave in the air. 'I can hear music… Sounds like something sort of… something scrabbling around; clunking…' She made an odd expression, raising her eyebrows, turning down the corners of her mouth, the tendons on her neck standing out.

She held the phone out to me, and just as she did so I heard something clatter metallically from the handset and a tiny voice shout something. Sophi's expression changed to one of bemusement. She held the handset away from her and looked dubiously at it, then carefully brought it to her ear.

I got up from the couch. There had been something about the tone and cadence of that voice… Sophi held the phone away from her ear a little so that I could listen in, my cheek against hers.

'… dropping the damned thing,' said a miniaturised, mechanised voice. It sounded very odd, and both thick and slurred. 'I think this is right number… are you there?'

Sophi put her finger to her lips, looking amused.

'Ach; is the answer machine thing. I just…' There was some more clattering. 'That is…' The voice deteriorated into mumbling. 'That is right number, isn't it? Yes; yes, looks famil… familia… familiar… I'm sorry, very very, but bit… but bit… bit worse for wearing, you know. I am just call to say, I have got your message. And I am to be there tomorrow, is this all right? Well, be there, I will. I mean. You know this now. I… I am hoping… this will-' Silence, a muffled curse and another clatter.

Sophi put her hand over the mouthpiece. 'God,' she whispered, 'he sounds drunk, doesn't he?'

'Hmm,' I said. I was sure I recognised the man's voice.

We listened in again. There was a scuffling sort of noise; something redolent of fabric and friction. Then: '… bounced… under the flippink… sideboard this time; most vexing. I… I think I go now… Are you still… ? Well, I mean… oh… well, anyway. Tomorrow.' There was heavy breathing for a moment. 'Tomorrow. I come for her. Goodnight.' Then a clunk, and nothing.

Sophi and I looked into each others eyes.

'Weird, eh?' she said, laughing a little nervously.

I nodded. She leaned out into the hall, replacing the phone. 'Wrong number, I suppose,' she said.

I bit my lip, standing with my back to the edge of the doorway, arms crossed. Sophi put a hand on my shoulder. 'You all right?'

'I'm fine,' I said. 'But I think I know who that was.'

'You do?' Sophi laughed. 'Oh; should I have said something?'

'I don't know,' I admitted. And indeed I didn't. 'I think it was my uncle Mo,' I said to her.

'What, the one in Bradford, the actor?'

'Well, Spayedthwaite. But yes. Yes, that's the one.'

Sophi looked thoughtful. 'So who was he calling?'

'Who indeed?' I nodded. 'Who did he think he was calling, and who's this "her" he's coming for?'

Sophi leaned against the other edge of the doorway, also folding her arms and drawing one leg up under her backside. We looked at each other for a moment.

'You?' she said quietly, eyebrows flexing.

'Me,' I said, wondering.

I stayed with Sophi that night, lying chastely in her generous arms while she breathed slowly and made little shiftings and mutterings in her sleep. Her father returned about one in the morning; she stirred when she heard the door, woke and rose, padding downstairs. I heard their muffled voices and then she returned, giggling quietly as she took off her dressing-gown. 'Drunk as a monkey,' she whispered, slipping back in beside me. 'These golf club meetings…' she snuggled up to me. 'At least he gets a lift home…'

I stroked her hair as she fitted her chin into the angle of my neck and shoulder. She jerked a couple of times, apologised once, then went quiet again. I think she was asleep within the minute. I heard Mr Woodbean come up the stairs, and experienced the fluttering trepidation I'd always felt when I'd stayed over at Sophi's, frightened that he would burst in and discover us together, however innocently. As ever, his heavy tread creaked on past Sophi's door and along the landing to his own room, and I breathed easily again.

Sophi dreamed beside me, her hand clenching around mine, her breath hesitating, then speeding up a little, then dropping back.

I lay there, unable to sleep despite being deathly tired. I had been late to bed the previous night, had not so much slept then as fallen into an alcoholic stupor, and had subsequently undergone all the trials and tribulations that had overtaken me.

It already seemed like a week must have passed between sitting in the Jaguar car as it glided past Harrods department store in London and standing on the dark bridge watching the bats fly and hearing the owl call while I listened in vain for the Voice of my God.

Still, I could not sleep, but kept turning over and over in my head all the oddnesses of my recent life: Morag's apparent avoidance of me, the zhlonjiz business, my Grandfather's lecherous attention, and now Uncle Mo, calling on the telephone, implicated and implicating, filthy drunk, seemingly thinking he was talking to a telephone answering machine when the Woodbeans had never had such a thing, and now presumably on his way, coming for somebody - me?

What was going on? What was happening to my life?

There had been enough untowardness and nonsense without Uncle Mo getting involved. Uncle Mohammed is the brother of Calli and Astar; a darkly handsome but prematurely aged early-forties actor who left the Community on his sixteenth birthday to seek fame and fortune in - where else? - London, and achieved a degree of fame before I was born when he landed a part in a Mancunian television soap opera. An unkind metropolitan newspaper critic, not remotely as impressed with Mo's talent as Mo was, once accused my uncle of putting the ham in Mohammed, which caused something of a fuss in the Moslem community - of which Mo, apostate, was now a part - and eventually required an apology and retraction. Mo was written out of the television story almost a decade ago and now exists in Spayedthwaite, near the northern city of Bradford, finding acting work very occasionally and - rumour has it - waiting on tables in an Indian restaurant the rest of the time, to make ends meet.