Iain Banks - Whit

She waved. 'Hello, my dear.'

Grandfather started over to her. 'Zhobelia…' he said. He looked at Sophi and Ricky and then stared at Morag, who was half sitting on the teacher's desk, arms folded.

I kept near Grandfather's shoulder. 'I think you should look at that bit of paper, Grandfather,' I said quietly.

'What?' He looked back at me. His face reddened as his expression turned from shock to anger. 'I thought you'd been told-'

I put my hand on his arm. 'No, Grandfather,' I said quietly and evenly. 'Everything has changed. Just look at the paper.'

He scowled, then did as I asked.

I'd written a number on the scrap of paper.

954024.

For a while I was worried that it was too subtle a way of getting through to him, that too much time had passed and he'd simply forgotten. He stared down in silence at the number on the paper, looking mystified.

Damn, I thought. It's just a string of numbers. Meaningless to him now. What had I been thinking of? He probably hadn't thought of that number in forty-five years; he certainly wouldn't have seen it. Is, Is; you idiot.

The number my Grandfather was looking at was his old army serial number.

Eventually, after what seemed like a long time to me, and while I was still cursing myself for a damned fool and wondering how else I might get through to him, his face changed, and slowly lost that look of anger. For a moment he visibly sagged, as though deflated, but then seemed to drag himself back upright. Even so, his face seemed crumpled, and he looked suddenly five years older. I swallowed down a feeling of sickness and tried to ignore the tears pricking behind my eyes.

He stared at me with big, bright eyes. His face looked as white as his hair. The sheet of paper dropped from his fingers. I stooped and caught it, then - as he swayed - took him by one arm and guided him back towards the desk. Morag moved away as he sat down on the edge, staring at the floor, breathing quickly and shallowly.

Zhobelia patted Grandfather on his other arm.

'Are you all right, dear? You don't look that well, you know. My, we've got old, haven't we?'

Grandfather took her hand and squeezed it, then looked up at me. 'Will you… ?' he said quietly, then looked round at Morag, Sophi and Angela. 'Would you excuse me… ?'

He stood. He did not seem to notice my hand, still supporting him. He looked into my eyes for a moment, a small frown on his face, for all the world as though he had forgotten who I was, and for another moment 1 was terrified that he was going to have a heart attack or a stroke or something awful. Then he said, 'Would you come… ?' and pushed himself away from the desk.

I followed him. He stopped at the door and looked back at the others. 'Ah, excuse us, please.'

In the hall he stopped again, and again seemed to pull himself upright. 'Perhaps we could take a turn round the garden, Isis,' he said.

The garden;' I said. 'Yes, that's a good idea…'

And so we walked in the garden, in the late-evening sun, my Grandfather and I, and I told him what I knew of his background and where I had found it, though not what and who had led me there. I showed him a copy I'd taken of the newspaper report and said that I had sent another one in a sealed envelope to Yolanda, to be kept by her lawyers. He nodded once or twice, a slightly distracted look on his face.

I told him, too, that Allan had been deceiving all of us, and that his lies would have to be dealt with. Grandfather did not seem very surprised or shocked by that.

At the far end of the formal garden there is a stone bench which looks down a steep grassy slope to the weeds, rushes and mud of the river bank. Beyond, the fields stretched to a distant line of trees, with the hills and escarpment beyond under a sky patched with cloud.

My Grandfather put his head in his hands for a moment, and I thought he might be about to weep, but he merely gave a single long sigh, then sat there, hands hanging over his knees, head bowed, staring at the path beneath us. I let him do this for a while, then - tentatively - put my arm over his shoulders. I more than half expected him to flinch at my touch and throw off my arm and shout at me, but he did not.

'I did a bad thing once,' he said quietly, flatly. 'I did one bad thing, Isis; one stupid thing… I was a different man then; a different man. I've spent the rest of the time trying to… trying to make up for it… and I have. I think I have.'

He went on like this for a while. I patted his back and made encouraging noises now and again. I still worried in a distant kind of way that he might suffer some attack or seizure, but mostly I was simply surprised at how unaffected I felt by all this, and how cynical my attitude seemed to have become. I did not comment on his claim that everything he had done since his crime had been to atone for it. Instead, I let him talk on while I turned over in my mind again my choice between the destructive truth and the protective lie.

I felt like Samson in the temple, able to tear it down. I thought of the children in the classroom with Sister Angela, and wondered what right I had to bring the stones of our Faith tumbling down on those innocent little heads. Well, I supposed, no more than I had the right to decide for them they should be brought up within a Faith founded on a great lie.

Perhaps I should just behave as everybody else seemed to behave, here as elsewhere, and settle the matter according to my own selfish interests… except I could not even decide in which direction that would take me either; part of me still wanted to take my revenge on the Faith by shaking it to its very foundations, to exercise the power - the real power - I knew I now possessed just by having discovered what I had, and bring as much as possible of it crashing down about those who had wronged me, leaving me to look on from outside, from above, at the resulting chaos, ready to pick up the resulting pieces and rearrange them however I saw fit.

Another part of me shrank from such apocalyptic dreams and just wanted everything to go back - as much as was possible - to the way it had been before all this had started, though with a feeling of personal security based this time on knowledge and hidden authority, not ignorance and blithe naivety.

Another part of me just wanted to walk away from all of it.

But which to choose?

Eventually, my Grandfather sat upright. 'So,' he said, gazing at the mansion house, not me. 'What is it you want, Isis?'

I sat there on the cool stone, feeling calm and clear and detached; cold and still, as though my heart was made of stone.

'Guess,' I said, speaking from that coldness in my soul.

He glanced at me with hurt eyes, and for a moment I felt both cruel and petty.

'I'm not leaving,' he said quickly, looking down at the gravel path at our feet. 'It wouldn't be fair to everybody else: They rely on me. On my strength. On my word. We can't abandon them.' He glanced back, to see how I was taking all this.

I didn't react.

He looked up at the sky now. 'I can share. You and I; we can share the responsibility. I've had to live with this,' he told me. 'All these years; had to live with it. Now it's your turn to share that burden. If you can.'

'I think I could cope,' I told him.

He glanced at me again. 'Well, then; that's settled. We don't tell them.' He coughed. 'For their own good.'

'Of course.'

'And Allan?' he asked, still not looking at me. The breeze brought the noise of bird-song across the lawn, flower beds and gravel paths to us, then took it away again.

'I think it was he who put the vial of zhlonjiz in my bag,' I told him. 'Though he may have got somebody else to carry out the actual physical act. It was certainly he who forged the letter from Cousin Morag.'