The Wasp Factory (14 page)

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Authors: Iain Banks

BOOK: The Wasp Factory
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I watched her get smaller and smaller, then turned and headed for shore.
I knew that three deaths in my immediate vicinity within four years
had
to look suspicious, and I had already planned my reaction carefully. I didn’t run straight home to the house, but went back up into the dunes and sat down there, holding the flowers. I sang songs to myself, made up stories, got hungry, rolled around in the sand a bit, rubbed a little of it into my eyes and generally tried to psyche myself up into something that might look like a terrible state for a wee boy to be in. I was still sitting there in the early evening, staring out to sea when a young forestry worker from the town found me.
He was one of the search party drummed up by Diggs after my father and relations missed us and couldn’t find us and called the police. The young man came over the tops of the dunes, whistling and casually whacking clumps of reed and grass with a stick.
I didn’t take any notice of him. I kept staring and shivering and clutching the flowers. My father and Diggs came along after the young man passed word along the line of people beating their way along the dunes, but I didn’t take any notice of those two, either. Eventually there were dozens of people clustered around me, looking at me, asking me questions, scratching their heads, looking at their watches and gazing about. I didn’t take any notice of them. They formed their line again and started searching for Esmerelda while I was carried back to the house. They offered me soup I was desperate for but took no notice of, asked me questions I answered with a catatonic silence and a stare. My uncle and aunt shook me, their faces red and eyes wet, but I took no notice of them. Eventually my father took me to my room, undressed me and put me to bed.
Somebody stayed in my room all night and, whether it was my father, Diggs or anybody else, I kept them and me awake all night by lying quiet for a while, feigning sleep, then screaming with all my might and falling out of bed to thrash about on the floor. Each time I was picked up, cuddled and put back to bed. Each time I pretended to go to sleep again and went crazy after a few minutes. If any of them talked to me, I just lay shaking in the bed staring at them, soundless and deaf.
I kept that up until dawn, when the search party returned, Esmerelda-less, then I let myself go to sleep.
 
It took me a week to recover, and it was one of the best weeks of my life. Eric came back from his school cruise and I started to talk a little after he arrived; just nonsense at first, then later disjointed hints at what had happened, always followed by screaming and catatonia.
Sometime around the middle of the week, Dr MacLennan was allowed to see me for a while, after Diggs overruled my father’s refusal to have me medically inspected by anybody else but him. Even so, he stayed in the room, glowering and suspicious, making sure that the examination was kept within certain limits; I was glad he didn’t let the doctor look all over me, and I responded by becoming a little more lucid.
By the end of the week I was still having the occasional fake nightmare, I would suddenly go very quiet and shivery every now and again, but I was eating more or less normally and could answer most questions quite happily. Talking about Esmerelda, and what had happened to her, still brought on mini-fits and screams and total withdrawal for a while, but after long and patient questioning by my father and Diggs I let them know what I wanted them to think had happened - a big kite; Esmerelda becoming entangled in the lines; me trying to help her and the winch slipping out of my fingers; desperate running; then a blank.
I explained that I was afraid I was jinxed, that I brought death and destruction upon all those near me, and also that I was afraid I might get sent to prison because people would think I had murdered Esmerelda. I wept and I hugged my father and I even hugged Diggs, smelling his hard-blue uniform fabric as I did so and almost feeling him melt and believe me. I asked him to go to the shed and take all my kites away and burn them, which he duly did, in a hollow now called Kite Pyre Dell. I was sorry about the kites, and I knew that I’d have to give up flying them for good to keep the act looking realistic, but it was worth it. Esmerelda never did show up; nobody saw her after me, as far as Diggs’ enquiries of trawlers and drilling-rigs and so on could show.
 
So I got to even up the score and have a wonderful, if demanding, week of fun acting. The flowers that I had still been clutching when they carried me back to the house had been prised from my fingers and left in a plastic bag on top of the fridge. I discovered them there, shrivelled and dead, forgotten and unnoticed, two weeks later. I took them for the shrine in the loft one night, and have them to this day, little brown twists of dried plant like old Sellotape, stuck in a little glass bottle. I wonder sometimes where my cousin ended up; at the bottom of the sea, or washed on to some craggy and deserted shore, or blown on to a high mountain face, to be eaten by gulls or eagles . . .
I would like to think that she died still being floated by the giant kite, that she went round the world and rose higher as she died of starvation and dehydration and so grew less weighty still, to become, eventually, a tiny skeleton riding the jetstreams of the planet; a sort of Flying Dutchwoman. But I doubt that such a romantic vision really matches the truth.
 
I spent most of Sunday in bed. After my binge of the previous night, I wanted rest, lots of liquid, little food, and my hangover to go away. I felt like deciding then and there never to get drunk again, but being so young I decided that this was probably a little unrealistic, so I determined not to get
that
drunk again.
My father came and banged at my door when I didn’t appear for breakfast.
‘And what’s wrong with you, as if I need ask?’
‘Nothing,’ I croaked at the door.
‘That’ll be right,’ my father said sarcastically. ‘And how much did you have to drink last night?’
‘Not much.’
‘Hnnh,’ he said.
‘I’ll be down soon,’ I said, and rocked to and fro in the bed to make noises which might make it sound as though I was getting up.
‘Was that you on the phone last night?’
‘What?’ I asked the door, stopping my rocking.
‘It was, wasn’t it? I thought it was you; you were trying to disguise your voice. What were you doing ringing at that time?’
‘Aah . . . I don’t remember ringing, Dad, honest,’ I said carefully.
‘Hnnh. You’re a fool, boy,’ he said, and clumped off down the hall. I lay there, thinking. I was quite sure I hadn’t called the house the previous night. I had been with Jamie in the pub, then with him and the girl outside, then alone when I was running, and then with Jamie and later him and his mother, then I walked home almost sober. There were no blank spots. I assumed it must have been Eric calling. From the sound of it my father couldn’t have spoken to him for very long, or he would have recognised his son’s voice. I lay back in my bed, hoping that Eric was still at large and heading this way, and also that my head and guts would stop reminding me how uncomfortable they could feel.
 
‘Look at you,’ my father said when I eventually came down in my dressing-gown to watch an old movie on the television that afternoon. ‘I hope you’re proud of yourself. I hope you think feeling like that makes you a man.’ My father tutted and shook his head, then went back to reading the
Scientific American
. I sat down carefully in one of the lounge’s big easy chairs.
‘I did get a bit drunk last night, Dad, I admit it. I’m sorry if it upsets you, but I assure you I’m suffering for it.’
‘Well, I hope that teaches you a lesson. Do you realise how many brain cells you probably managed to kill off last night?’
‘A good few thousand,’ I said after a brief pause for calculation.
My father nodded enthusiastically: ‘At least.’
‘Well, I’ll try not to do it again.’
‘Hnnh.’
‘Brr
ap
!’ said my anus loudly, surprising me as well as my father. He put the magazine down and stared into space over my head, smiling wisely as I cleared my throat and flapped the hem of my dressing-gown as unobtrusively as I could. I could see his nostrils flex and quiver.
‘Lager and whisky, eh?’ he said, nodding to himself and taking up his magazine again. I felt myself blush and I gritted my teeth, glad he had retreated behind the glossy pages. How did he
do
that? I pretended nothing had happened.
‘Oh. By the way,’ I said, ‘I hope you don’t mind, but I told Jamie that Eric had escaped.’
My father glared over the magazine, shook his head and continued reading. ‘Idiot,’ he said.
 
In the evening, after a snack rather than a meal, I went up to the loft and used the telescope to take a distant look at the island, making sure that nothing had happened to it while I rested inside the house. Everything appeared calm. I did go for one short walk in the cool overcast, just along the beach to the south end of the island and back, then I stayed in and watched some more television when the rain came on, carried on a low wind, glum-muttering against the window.
 
I had gone to bed when the phone rang. I got up quickly, as I hadn’t really started to drop off when it went, and ran down to get there before my father. I didn’t know if he was still up or not.
‘Yes?’ I said breathlessly, tucking my pyjama jacket into the bottoms. Pips sounded, then a voice on the other end sighed.
‘No.’
‘What?’ I said, frowning.
‘No,’ the voice on the other end said.
‘Eh?’ I said. I wasn’t even sure it was Eric.
‘You said “Yes”. I say “No”.’
‘What do you want me to say?’
‘“Porteneil 531”.’
‘OK. Porteneil 531. Hello?’
‘OK. Goodbye.’ The voice giggled, the phone went dead. I looked at it accusingly, then put it down in the cradle. I hesitated. The phone rang again. I snatched it up halfway through the first tinkle.
‘Ye—’ I started, then the pips sounded. I waited until they stopped and said, ‘Porteneil 531.’
‘Porteneil 531,’ said Eric. I thought it was Eric, at least.
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Yes what?’
‘Yes, this is Porteneil 531.’
‘But I thought
this
was Porteneil 531.’
‘
This
is. Who is that? Is that you—’
‘It’s me. Is that Porteneil 531?’
‘Yes!’ I shouted.
‘And who’s that?’
‘Frank Cauldhame,’ I said, trying to be calm. ‘Who’s that?’
‘Frank Cauldhame,’ Eric said. I looked around, up and down the stairs, but saw no sign of my father.
‘Hello, Eric,’ I said, smiling. I decided that, whatever else happened, tonight I would not make him angry. I’d put the phone down rather than say the wrong thing and have my brother wreck yet another piece of Post Office property.
‘I just told you my name’s Frank. Why are you calling me “Eric”?’
‘Come on, Eric, I recognise your voice.’
‘I’m Frank. Stop calling me Eric.’
‘OK. OK. I’ll call you Frank.’
‘So who are you?’
I thought for a moment. ‘Eric?’ I said tentatively.
‘You just said you were called Frank.’
‘Well,’ I sighed, leaning against the wall with one hand and wondering what I could say. ‘That was . . . that was just a joke. Oh God, I don’t know.’ I frowned at the phone and waited for Eric to say something.
‘Anyway, Eric,’ Eric said, ‘what’s the latest news?’
‘Oh, nothing much. I was out last night, at the pub. Did you call last night?’
‘Me? No.’
‘Oh. Dad said somebody did. I thought it might have been you.’
‘Why would I call?’
‘Well, I don’t know.’ I shrugged to myself. ‘For the same reason you called tonight. Whatever.’
‘Well, why do you think I called tonight?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Christ; you don’t know why I’ve called, you aren’t sure of your own name, you get mine wrong. You’re not up to much, are you?’
‘Oh dear,’ I said, more to myself than to Eric. I could feel this conversation going all the wrong way.
‘Aren’t you going to ask me how
I
am?’
‘Yes, yes,’ I said. ‘How are you?’
‘Terrible. How are you?’
‘OK. Why are you feeling terrible?’
‘You don’t really care.’
‘Of course I care. What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing that would interest you. Ask me something else, like how the weather is or where I am or something. I know you don’t care how I feel.’
‘Of course I do. You’re my brother. Naturally I care,’ I protested. Just at that moment I heard the kitchen door open, and seconds later my father appeared at the bottom of the stairs and, taking hold of the great wooden ball sculpted on to the top of the last banister, stood glaring up at me. He lifted his head and put it slightly to one side to listen better. I missed a little of what Eric said in reply to me, and only caught:

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