Free The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks

complications.

    ‘Well, just you be careful, then. I always know how much you’ve had from your farts.’ He snorted, as though imitating one.

    My father has a theory about the link between mind and bowel being both crucial and very direct. It’s another of his ideas which he keeps trying to interest people in; he has a manuscript on the subject (‘The State of the Fart’) which he also sends away to London to publishers now and again and which they of course send back by return. He has variously claimed that from farts he can tell not only what people have eaten or drunk, but also the sort of person they are, what they ought to eat, whether they are emotionally unstable or upset, whether they are keeping secrets, laughing at you behind your back or trying to ingratiate themselves with you, and even what they are thinking about at the precise moment they issue the fart (this largely from the sound). All total nonsense.

    ‘H’m,’ I said, non-committal to a fault.

    ‘Oh, I can,’ he said as I finished my meal and leaned back, wiping my mouth on the back of my hand, more to annoy him than anything else. He kept nodding. ‘I know when you’ve had Heavy, or Lager. And I’ve smelt Guinness off you, too.’

    ‘I don’t drink Guinness,’ I lied, secretly impressed. ‘I’m afraid of getting athlete’s throat.’

    This witticism was lost on him apparently, for without a pause he continued: ‘It’s just money down the drain, you know. Don’t expect me to finance your alcoholism.’

    ‘Oh, you’re being silly,’ I said, and stood up.

    ‘I know what I’m talking about. I’ve seen better men than you think they could handle the drink and end up in the gutter with a bottle of the fortified wine.’

    If that last sally was intended to go below the belt, it failed; the ‘better men than you’ line was worked out long ago.

    ‘Well, it’s my life, isn’t it?’ I said and, putting my plate in the sink, left the kitchen. My father said nothing.

     
That night I watched television and did some paperwork, amending the maps to include the newly named Black Destroyer Hill, writing a brief description of what I’d done to the rabbits and logging both the effects of the bombs that I’d used and the manufacture of the latest batch. I determined to keep the Polaroid with the War Bag in future; for low-risk, punitive expeditions like that against the rabbits it would more than repay the extra weight and the amount of time consumed using it. Of course, for serious devilry the War Bag has to go by itself, and a camera would just be a liability, but I haven’t had a real threat for a couple of years, since the time some big boys in the town took to bullying me in Porteneil and ambushing me on the path.

    I thought things were going to get pretty heavy for a while, but they never did escalate the way I thought they might. I threatened them with my knife once, after they stopped me on my bike and started pushing me around and demanding money. They backed off that time, but a few days later they tried to invade the island. I held them off with steelies and stones, and they fired back with air-guns, and for a while it was quite exciting, but then Mrs Clamp came with the weekly messages and threatened to call the police, and after calling her a few nasty names they left.

    I started the cache system then, building up supplies of steelies, stones, bolts and lead fishing-weights buried in plastic bags and boxes at strategic points around the island. I also set up snares and trip-wires linked to glass bottles in the grass on the dunes over the creek, so that if anybody tried to sneak up they would either catch themselves or snag the wire, pulling the bottle out of its hole in the sand and down on to a stone. I sat up for the next few nights, my head poking out of the back skylight of the loft, my ears straining for the tinkle of glass breaking or muffled curses, or the more usual signal of the birds being disturbed and