The Wasp Factory

by Iain Banks

Genres: Suspense

Synopsis

'One of the most brilliant first novels I have come across' Telegraph

'One of the top 100 novels of the century' Independent

'Brilliant...irresistible...compelling' New York Times

'Macabre, bizarre, and impossible to put down' Financial Times

'Read it if you dare' Daily Express

The Wasp Factory is a bizarre, imaginative, disturbing, and darkly comic look into the mind of a child psychopath - one of the most infamous of contemporary Scottish novels.

'Two years after I killed Blyth I murdered my young brother Paul, for quite different reasons than I'd disposed of Blyth, and then a year after that I did for my young cousin Esmerelda, more or less on a whim. That's my score to date. Three. I haven't killed anybody for years, and don't intend to ever again. It was just a stage I was going through.'

Enter - if you can bear it - the extraordinary private world of Frank, just sixteen, and unconventional, to say the least.

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 256

Sample

The following three novels, written between 1974 and
1979, were science fiction, because I’d decided that was what
I was; a science-fiction writer. It was my genre. I enjoyed the
classics and loved contemporary mainstream literature, but
I adored science fiction as the exemplar arena of the unfettered
imagination and so that was what I would write,
probably for the rest of my career, once I actually had one.

More rejection slips. More rejection slips from a smaller
number of publishers, as fewer had science fiction lists
within which to bring my deathless prose to an unsuspecting
but, I was certain, ultimately extravagantly
appreciative and indeed rightly thankful public.


So by 1980 I was getting fed up. Maybe I wasn’t just a
science-fiction writer after all. Maybe I should try writing
an ordinary, boring, mainstream novel. Maybe it was even
time to consider writing a second draft of one of these
works of patent genius, rather than trusting that London
publishers would have the wit to recognise an obvious
rough diamond that, a trifling number of easily polished
awkwardnesses having been dealt with, was surely about to
make the ungrateful wretches millions…


The Wasp Factory represented me admitting partial
defeat, heaving a slightly theatrical sigh, stepping reluctantly
away from the gaudy wall-size canvasses of
science/space fiction to lay down my oversize set of Rolf
Harris paint rollers, pick up a set of brushes thinner than
pencils and – jaw set, brows furrowed – lower myself to
using a more restricted palette and produce what felt like
a miniature in comparison.


I’d grown up in Fife and Gourock/Greenock; I suppose
I could have attempted some piece of gnarly Scots realism.
I’d been to university; I might have gone for a studenty
campus novel. I’d not long moved to London so could have
essayed a Bumpkin in the Big Bad City work.


In the end I went for something that kept me closer to
my by-then comfort zone; a first-person narrative set on a
remote Scottish nearly-island told by a normality challenged
teenage eccentric with severe violence issues
allowed me to treat it as something resembling science
fiction. The island could be envisaged as a planet, Frank,
the protagonist, almost as an alien. With an internal grimace
I gave in to the write-what-you-know school but
torqued in a dose of Skiffy hyperbole, mining my own past
for exaggerateable experiences. I’d built dams; Frank
would too, though with a slightly psychotic über-motif
involving women, water, the sea and revenge. I’d constructed
big home-made kites; so would Frank, and use
one as a murder weapon. Along with a pal, I’d indulged in
the then not-uncommon and perfectly innocent teenage
boy pursuit of making bombs, flame throwers, guns,
giant catapults and more bombs; Frank would too, though
alone and with a more determinedly harm-minded
intensity.


Beyond that, it was supposed to be a pro-feminist, antimilitarist
work, satirising religion and commenting on the
way we’re shaped by our surroundings and upbringing and
the usually skewed information we’re presented with by
those in power. Frank is supposed to stand for all of us, in
some ways; deceived, misled, harking back to something
that never existed, vengeful for no good reason and trying
too hard to live up to some oversold ideal that is of no real
relevance anyway. There are places, too, where I was trying
to use Frank to express something about the stated and real
reasons for brutality (hence Frank’s musings on the attack
on the rabbit warren).


I was also trying to make the point that childhood innocence
isn’t – and wasn’t – as most people seem to imagine
it; children probably harbour quite as many violent
thoughts as adults, they just don’t usually possess a sophisticated
moral framework within which to place them.


Not, come to think of it, that all adults do, either.

At the north end of the island, near the tumbled remains of the slip where the handle of the rusty winch still creaks in an easterly wind, I had two Poles on the far face of the last dune. One of the Poles held a rat head with two dragonflies, the other a seagull and two mice. I was just sticking one of the mouse heads back on when the birds went up into the evening air, kaw-calling and screaming, wheeling over the path through the dunes where it went near their nests. I made sure the head was secure, then clambered to the top of the dune to watch with my binoculars.

Diggs, the policeman from the town, was coming down the path on his bike, pedalling hard, his head down as the wheels sank part way into the sandy surface. He got off the bike at the bridge and left it propped against the suspension cables, then walked to the middle of the swaying bridge, where the gate is. I could see him press the button on the phone. He stood for a while, looking round about at the quiet dunes and the settling birds. He didn’t see me, because I was too well hidden. Then my father must have answered the buzzer in the house, because Diggs stooped slightly and talked into the grille beside the button, and then pushed the gate open and walked over the bridge, on to the island and down the path towards the house. When he disappeared behind the dunes I sat for a while, scratching my crotch as the wind played with my hair and the birds returned to their nests.

I took my catapult from my belt, selected a half-inch steelie, sighted carefully, then sent the big ball-bearing arcing out over the river, the telephone poles and the little suspension bridge to the mainland. The shot hit the ‘Keep Out - Private Property’ sign with a thud I could just hear, and I smiled. It was a good omen. The Factory hadn’t been specific (it rarely is), but I had the feeling that whatever it was warning me about was important, and I also suspected it would be bad, but I had been wise enough to take the hint and check my Poles, and now I knew my aim was still good; things were still with me.

I decided not to go straight back to the house. Father didn’t like me to be there when Diggs came and, anyway, I still had a couple of Poles to check before the sun went down. I jumped and slid down the slope of the dune into its shadow, then turned at the bottom to look back up at those small heads and bodies as they watched over the northern approaches to the island. They looked fine, those husks on their gnarled branches. Black ribbons tied to the wooden limbs blew softly in the breeze, waving at me. I decided nothing would be too bad, and that tomorrow I would ask the Factory for more information. If I was lucky, my father might tell me something and, if I was luckier still, it might even be the truth.

‘Diggs was just here. I suppose you know.’

He put the stub of the fat cigar he had been smoking under the cold tap, turned the water on for a second while the brown stump sizzled and died, then threw the sodden remnant in the bin. I put my things down on the big table and sat down, shrugging. My father turned up the ring on the cooker under the soup-pan, looking beneath the lid into the warming mixture and then turning back to look at me.

There was a layer of grey-blue smoke in the room at about shoulder level, and a big wave in it, probably produced by me as I came in through the double doors of the back porch. The wave rose slowly between us while my father stared at me. I fidgeted, then looked down, toying with the wrist-rest of the black catapult. It crossed my mind that my father looked worried, but he was good at acting and perhaps that was just what he wanted me to think, so deep down I remained unconvinced.

‘I suppose I’d better tell you,’ he said, then turned away again, taking up a wooden spoon and stirring the soup. I waited. ‘It’s Eric.’

Then I knew what had happened. He didn’t have to tell me the rest. I suppose I could have thought from the little he’d said up until then that my half-brother was dead, or ill, or that something had happened to him, but I knew then it was something Eric had done, and there was only one thing he could have done which would make my father look worried. He had escaped. I didn’t say anything, though.

‘Eric has escaped from the hospital. That was what Diggs came to tell us. They think he might head back here. Take those things off the table; I’ve told you before.’ He sipped the soup, his back still turned. I waited until he started to turn round, then took the catapult, binoculars and spade off the table. In the same flat tone my father went on, ‘Well, I don’t suppose he’ll get this far. They’ll probably pick him up in a day or two. I just thought I’d tell you. In case anybody else hears and says anything. Get out a plate.’

I went to the cupboard and took out a plate, then sat down again, one leg crossed underneath me. My father went back to stirring the soup, which I could smell now above the cigar smoke. I could feel excitement in my stomach - a rising, tingling rush. So Eric was coming back home again; that was good-bad. I knew he’d make it. I didn’t even think of asking the Factory about it; he’d be here. I wondered how long it would take him, and whether Diggs would now have to go shouting through the town, warning that the mad boy who set fire to dogs was on the loose again; lock up your hounds!

My father ladled some soup into my plate. I blew on it. I thought of the Sacrifice Poles. They were my early-warning system and deterrent rolled into one; infected, potent things which looked out from the island, warding off. Those totems were my warning shot; anybody who set foot on the island after seeing them should know what to expect. But it looked like, instead of being a clenched and threatening fist, they would present a welcoming, open hand. For Eric.

‘I see you washed your hands again,’ my father said as I sipped the hot soup. He was being sarcastic. He took the bottle of whisky from the dresser and poured himself a drink. The other glass, which I guessed had been the constable’s, he put in the sink. He sat down at the far end of the table.

My father is tall and slim, though slightly stooped. He has a delicate face, like a woman’s, and his eyes are dark. He limps now, and has done ever since I can remember. His left leg is almost totally stiff, and he usually takes a stick with him when he leaves the house. Some days, when it’s damp, he has to use the stick inside, too, and I can hear him clacking about the uncarpeted rooms and corridors of the house; a hollow noise, going from place to place. Only here in the kitchen is the stick quieted; the flagstones silence it.

That stick is the symbol of the Factory’s security. My father’s leg, locked solid, has given me my sanctuary up in the warm space of the big loft, right at the top of the house where the junk and the rubbish are, where the dust moves and the sunlight slants and the Factory sits - silent, living and still.

My father can’t climb up the narrow ladder from the top floor; and, even if he could, I know he wouldn’t be able to negotiate the twist you have to make to get from the top of the ladder, round the brickwork of the chimney flues, and into the loft proper.

So the place is mine.

I suppose my father is about forty-five now, though sometimes I think he looks a lot older, and occasionally I think he might be a little younger. He won’t tell me his real age, so forty-five is my estimate, judging by his looks.

‘What height is this table?’ he said suddenly, just as I was about to go to the breadbin for a slice to wipe my plate with. I turned round and looked at him, wondering why he was bothering with such an easy question.

‘Thirty inches,’ I told him, and took a crust from the bin.

‘Wrong,’ he said with an eager grin. ‘Two foot six.’

I shook my head at him, scowling, and wiped the brown rim of soup from the inside of my plate. There was a time when I was genuinely afraid of these idiotic questions, but now, apart from the fact that I must know the height, length, breadth, area and volume of just about every part of the house and everything in it, I can see my father’s obsession for what it is. It gets embarrassing at times when there are guests in the house, even if they are family and ought to know what to expect. They’ll be sitting there, probably in the lounge, wondering whether Father’s going to feed them anything or just give an impromptu lecture on cancer of the colon or tapeworms, when he’ll sidle up to somebody, look round to make sure everybody’s watching, then in a conspiratorial stage-whisper say: ‘See that door over there? It’s eighty-five inches, corner to corner.’ Then he’ll wink and walk off, or slide over on his seat, looking nonchalant.

Ever since I can remember there have been little stickers of white paper all over the house with neat black-biro writing on them. Attached to the legs of chairs, the edges of rugs, the bottoms of jugs, the aerials of radios, the doors of drawers, the headboards of beds, the screens of televisions, the handles of pots and pans, they give the appropriate measurement for the part of the object they’re stuck to. There are even ones in pencil stuck to the leaves of plants. When I was a child I once went round the house tearing all the stickers off; I was belted and sent to my room for two days. Later my father decided it would be useful and character-forming for me to know all the measurements as well as he did, so I had to sit for hours with the Measurement Book (a huge loose-leaf thing with all the information on the little stickers carefully recorded according to room and category of object), or go round the house with a jotter, making my own notes. This was all in addition to the usual lessons my father gave me on mathematics and history and so on. It didn’t leave much time for going out to play, and I resented it a great deal. I was having a War at the time - the Mussels against the Dead Flies I think it was - and while I was in the library poring over the book and trying to keep my eyes open, soaking up all those damn silly Imperial measurements, the wind would be blowing my fly armies over half the island and the sea would first sink the mussel shells in their high pools and then cover them with sand. Luckily my father grew tired of this grand scheme and contented himself with firing the odd surprise question at me concerning the capacity of the umbrella-stand in pints or the total area in fractions of an acre of all the curtains in the house actually hung up at the time.

‘I’m not answering these questions any more,’ I said to him as I took my plate to the sink. ‘We should have gone metric years ago.’

My father snorted into his glass as he drained it. ‘Hectares and that sort of rubbish. Certainly not. It’s all based on the measurement of the globe, you know. I don’t have to tell you what nonsense that is.’

I sighed as I took an apple from the bowl on the window sill. My father once had me believing that the earth was a Möbius strip, not a sphere. He still maintains that he believes this, and makes a great show of sending off a manuscript to publishers down in London, trying to get them to publish a book expounding this view, but I know he’s just mischief-making again, and gets most of his pleasure from his acts of stunned disbelief and then righteous indignation when the manuscript is eventually returned. This occurs about every three months, and I doubt that life would be half as much fun for him without this sort of ritual. Anyway, that is one of his reasons for not switching over to a metric standard for his stupid measurements, though in fact he’s just lazy.

‘What were you up to today?’ He stared across the table at me, rolling the empty tumbler around on the wooden table-top.

I shrugged. ‘Out. Walking and things.’

‘Building dams again?’ he sneered.

‘No,’ I said, shaking my head confidently and biting the apple. ‘Not today.’

‘I hope you weren’t out killing any of God’s creatures.’

I shrugged at him again. Of course I was out killing things. How the hell am I supposed to get heads and bodies for the Poles and the Bunker if I don’t kill things? There just aren’t enough natural death. . .