The Crow Road

by Iain Banks

  Rory and Prentice walked on together, their short shadows preceding them. The road would be turning east soon, and taking them back to the main road so that they could turn south and walk back to the house. Lewis knew his way about the area, so Rory was happy to let him wander off alone.

  A car passed them on the single track road, heading north; they stood aside to let it pass, waving at the single occupant when he waved at them. The surf was a distant wash of noise, rolling over the sparkling machair in invisible waves. Larks warbled, points of sound in the sweep of blue sky and small puffy clouds.

  "Is it all right to walk on a Sunday, Uncle Rory?"

  "All right?" Rory said, glancing at the boy. In shorts and a short-sleeved shirt, he looked almost painfully thin. Rory wore an old cheesecloth shirt and cut-off jeans.

  "Aye; dad was saying you're not even allowed to walk in some islands on a Sunday!" Prentice rolled his eyes and puffed his cheeks out.

  "Well, yeah," Rory said. "I think they're like that in Lewis and Harris. But that's the hard-line prods up there. Down here they're Catholics; bit more relaxed about that sort of thing."

  "But not being able to walk!" Prentice protested, shaking his head at his shadow on the grey-black tarmac.

  "I think you're allowed to walk to church and back."

  "Ho! Big deal!" Prentice didn't sound impressed. He was silent for a while. "Mind you," he said, sounding sly. "I suppose you could always take a very long way round."

  Rory laughed, just as his attention was caught by a little white blossom lying on the road surface in front of them. Prentice looked up, at first surprised, then smiling, when Rory laughed. Prentice stood on the flower, then jumped, shrieking with pain.

  "Ah; my foot! My foot! Oh! Oh!"

  Rory stood, open mouthed for a second, watching Prentice hop around on the tarmac, clutching at one ankle, his face contorted. Rory thought for a second Prentice was pretending, but the boy's expression convinced him he was in real pain. Prentice hopped onto the grass and fell over, still clutching at his foot; Rory could see something white stuck to the sole of the boy's sandshoe.

  "What is it?" he said, crouching down by Prentice's side. The boy was shaking, and when he looked up at Rory there were tears in his eyes.

  "I don't know," he sobbed. "Stepped on something."

  "Let me see." Rory sat on the grass in front of Prentice and held his foot. The little white blossom he'd seen on the road's surface was stuck to the boy's sandshoe; it wasn't a flower, it was a little paper charity flag for the Royal National Lifeboat Institution, the sort you secured to your lapel with a pin. The flag was still attached to its pin, which was buried in the sole of Prentice's shoe. Rory sucked his breath in when he saw it; most of the pin must be inside the boy's foot, near the middle of the broadest part of the sole.

  Prentice's foot and leg shuddered as he rolled on the grass. "It's awful sore, Uncle Rory," he said, voice trembling.

  "It's just a wee pin," Rory said, trying to sound encouraging. "I'll have it out in a second."

  He licked his lips, rubbed his right index finger and thumb together for a couple of seconds and held Prentice's foot steady with his left hand. He used the nails of his finger and thumb to find the head of the pin, itself almost buried in the tan rubber sole of the sandshoe. He grasped it. Prentice whimpered, foot trembling in Rory's grip. Rory gritted his teeth, pulled.

  The pin slid out; an inch of it, shining in the sunlight. Prentice cried out, then relaxed. Rory put the boy's foot down gently.

  Prentice sat up, face quivering. "That's better," he said. He used one shirt sleeve to wipe at his face. "What was it?"

  "This." Rory showed him the pin.

  Prentice grimaced. "Ouch."

  "You're probably going to need a tetanus injection," Rory told him.

  "Aw no! More needles!"

  They took his shoe and sock off. Rory sucked at the tiny wound and spat, trying to remove any dirt. Prentice, eyes still watering, laughed nervously. "Is that not a horrible smell, no, Uncle Rory?"

  Rory threw the boy's white sock at him, grinning. "I've been to India, kid; that ain't nuthin."

  Prentice put his shoe and sock back on and got to his feet, obviously in some pain when he stood. "Here; I'll give you a carry-coal-bag," Rory said, turning his back to the boy and putting his arms out from his sides as he crouched.

  "Really, Uncle Rory? You sure? Will I not be awful heavy?"

  "Hop on; you're a bean-pole, laddie. I'll probably go faster with you on my back; you walk too slow. Come on."

  Prentice put his arms round Rory's neck and got up onto his back; Rory set off at a run. Prentice whooped.

  "See?" Rory said, slowing to a fast walk.

  "I'm not too heavy, honest, Uncle Rory?"

  "What? A skelf like you? Never."

  "Do you think this is a punishment from God for talking about walking on a Sunday, Uncle Rory?"

  Rory laughed. "Certainly not."

  "Do you not believe in God either, Uncle Rory?"

  "No. Well; not in the Christian God. Maybe something else." He shrugged his shoulders and shifted Prentice into a more comfortable position on his back. "When I was in India, I thought then I knew what it was I might believe in. But when I came back it all seemed to go away again. I think it was something to do with the place." He looked to one side, at the dazzling expanse of machair; endless emerald green scattered thick with flowers so bright they seemed lit from inside. "Places have an effect on people. They alter your thoughts. India does, anyway."

  "What about when you went to America? Did that effect what you thought?"

  Rory laughed gently. "Yeah; it did that all right. Kind of in the opposite way, though."

  "Are you going to go away again?"

  "I expect so."

  Prentice elapsed his hands in front of Rory's chin. Rory glanced at his wrists; thin and fragile looking. Prentice was still holding the little Lifeboat flag, twirling the pin between his fingers.

  "When did you stop believing in God?" Prentice asked.

  Rory shrugged. "Hard to say; I think I started to think for myself when I was about your age, maybe a bit younger."

  "Oh."

  "I tried to imagine how the world had been created, and I imagined Sooty — you know; the glove puppet —»

  "I know; they still have him. Sooty and Sweep." Prentice giggled.

  "Well, I imagined him standing on a wee planet about the size of a football —»

  "But he hasn't got any legs!"

  Ah, but he did in the annuals I got for Christmas. Anyway, I imagined him waving a wand, and the world came into existence. Like, I'd been to church, been to Sunday School, so I knew all the stuff in the Bible, but I guess I needed to envisage it… see it, in my own terms."

  "Uh-huh."

  "But then I thought; wait a minute; where does the planet Sooty's standing on come from? I thought Sooty could have waved his wand and made that appear too, but where would he stand while he was doing it? I mean, I didn't think, Well, he could float in space, and it never occurred to me to ask where Sooty himself had come from, or the wand, but I was already heading towards not believing, I suppose. It was like the dragons."

  "Dragons?" Prentice said, sounding excited and wary at once. Rory felt the boy tremble.

  "Yeah," Rory said. "I used to hide under the covers of my bed at night, imagining there were dragons out there; in the room when the light was out, when there was nobody else there. I'd hunch down under the covers with just an air-hole to breath through, and shelter there. The dragons couldn't get you through the air-hole; they could only get you if you put out a foot or a hand, or worst of all your head; that was when they struck; bit it off, or pulled you right out and ate all of you."

  "Waa! Alien!" Prentice said. His arms squeezed Rory's neck.

  "Yeah," Rory said. 'Well, I guess a lot of horror films come from that sort of background. Anyway; I used to be petrified of these dragons, even though I knew they probably didn't exist
; I mean I knew there was no Santa Claus, and no fairies and elves, but still thought ghosts and dragons were a possibility, and it only took one to kill you… I mean how did I really know I could trust adults? Even mum and dad? There were so many things I didn't really understand about people, about life. Most of the time you could just ignore a lot of the stuff you didn't know; it'd come in time, you'd be told when you needed to know… But how did you know that there wasn't some big secret, some big, evil deal going down that involves you but had been kept secret from you?

  "Like, maybe your parents were just fattening you up until you would make a decent meal for these dragons, or it was an intelligence test; the kids smart enough to have sussed out the fact there were dragons around were the ones that would survive, and the ones that just lay there, trusting, each night, deserved to die, and their parents couldn't tell them or the dragons would eat them, and stories about dragons were the only clues you were ever given; that was all the adults could do to warn you… I was pretty paranoid about it. I used to be frightened to fall asleep at night sometimes, afraid I'd stick my head out from under the clothes while I was asleep and wake up to find my head in a dragon's mouth, before I died."

  "Wow!"

  Rory grunted, shifting Prentice's weight again. Kid wasn't so feather-light after all. "But then one night, under the covers — I was just getting older, I guess, but anyway — I was sort of reviewing the day, and I was thinking about school, and what we'd learned, and we'd been doing the Second World War, and I hadn't liked the sound of this Hitler guy at all; and I'd asked dad, just to double-check, and —»

  "So he was still alive? When you were ten?"

  "Oh yeah; didn't die until I was twelve. Anyway; he brought down this book; history of the War in pictures, and it had like all these photos of the death camps, where the Nazis murdered millions of Jews, and communists, and homosexuals, and gypsies and anybody else they didn't like… but mostly Jews, and there were like just piles of bodies; incredibly thin bodies, like bones; skeletons wrapped with tissue paper, and piled higher than a house… and pits; long pits full of bodies, and the metal stretchers they were put onto to be shoved into the ovens, and the piles of wedding rings and spectacles; glasses, and even artificial legs and weird stuff like that…

  Anyway, that night they put a night-light in my room, in case I had nightmares, but the shadows were even worse than the darkness, and so I just lay there, under the covers, quivering with fear thanks to these damn dragons, and I wished Ken was back from University because sometimes I was allowed to sleep in his room, and I wished I was allowed a torch in my room, but 1 wasn't, and I was wondering about crying really loudly, because that would bring mum and dad in to see me, but then what did I say was wrong? And then I suddenly thought…

  The dragons might be there; they might be real and they might be every bit as vicious as I'd imagined, but I'm a human being; so was Adolf Hitler and he killed millions of people!

  "And I threw back the bedclothes before I had any more time to think about it and burst out of the bed; threw myself into the middle of the bedroom, screaming and roaring and thrashing about."

  "Ha!" Prentice said, squirming.

  "That brought mum and dad through; thought I was having a fit or something. But I just looked up from the carpet with this great big reassuring smile and said there was nothing to worry about." Rory smiled at the memory, bringing his head up to look around. A break in the dunes let the sound of surf grow louder. There was a car in the distance coming towards them.

  "Brilliant!" Prentice said.

  Rory grunted, shifting Prentice's weight once more. "Never had any trouble with dragons after that."

  "I'll bet you didn't!"

  The car hummed nearer as the view to one side slowly opened up through the dunes to reveal the shining beach and blue-green ocean.

  "Let's see if we can get a lift off this car, eh?" Rory said. "You okay to get down?

  "Yeah!" Prentice slid off onto the grass and stood there, favouring his good leg, while Rory stretched and rubbed at his lower back. He stuck one thumb out when the car was still a few hundred yards away. Prentice reached up and put something on the thin collar of Rory's shirt. It was the little paper Lifeboat flag. Rory held his collar out so that he could look at it. He looked down at the boy's grinning face. "Thanks," he said.

  "That's your medal, Uncle Rory," Prentice told him. "For being a brilliant uncle."

  Rory ruffled the boy's hair. Thanks, Prentice." He looked back at the car. Was it slowing?

  "I used to worry about Darth Vader," Prentice confessed, putting his arm round Rory's waist and lifting his foot to massage it with one hand. "I'd lie under the covers and make the noise he makes when he's breathing, and then I'd stop, but sometimes it would go on after I'd stopped!" Prentice shook his head, and slapped one hand off his forehead. "Crazy, eh?"

  Rory laughed, as the approaching car started to slow down. "Yeah, well, that's what stories do to you, sometimes. Your dad's always tried never to tell you lies, or stories that would scare you or make you superstitious, but —»

  "Ha!" Prentice said, as the battered Cortina II drew to a stop just past them. "I remember he tried to tell us clouds came from the Steam Packet Hotel, in the town. That's what they were: packets of steam from the Steam Packet Hotel. Ha!"

  Rory smiled as they walked towards the car, him supporting the limping boy. Rory looked away for a second, towards the beach, where the long Atlantic rollers crashed against the broad expanse of gold.

  * * *

  He sniffed the glass; the whisky was amber, and there wasn't much of it. The smell stung. He put it to his lips, hesitated, then knocked it back in one go. The drink made his lips and tongue tingle; his throat felt sore and the fumes went up his nose and down into his lungs. He tried very hard not to cough like he'd seen people cough in westerns when they tried whisky for the first time, and got away with just clearing his throat rather loudly (he looked round at the curtains, afraid somebody might have heard). His eyes and nose were watering, so he pulled his hanky from his trousers, blew his nose.

  The whisky tasted horrible. And people drank this stuff for pleasure? He had hoped that by trying some whisky he'd understand adults a bit better; instead they made even less sense.

  He was standing between the curtains and the windows of the ballroom of the Steam Packet Hotel, on the railway pier at Gallanach. Outside, the afternoon was wet and miserable-looking, and what little light there had been — watery and grey — was going now. Sheets of rain hauled in off the bay, blew around the steamers and ferries moored round the windswept quay, then collapsed upon the dark grey buildings of the town. The street lamps were already lit, and a few cars crawled through the rough-mirror streets with their lights on and their wipers flapping to and fro.

  Music played behind Rory. He balanced the empty whisky glass on the window-sill and gave his nose a last wipe, pocketing his hanky. He supposed he'd better go back into the ballroom. Ballroom; he hated the word. He hated the music they were playing — Highland stuff, mostly — he hated being here in this dull, wet town, with these dull people listening to their dull music at their dull wedding. They should be playing the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, and they shouldn't be getting married in the first place — modern people didn't.

  "Heeee-yooch!" a voice shouted, startlingly nearby, making Rory jump. The curtains bowed in a few yards away, almost touching the window-sill, the movement like a wave. Rory could hear the stamping, slapping feet move in time to the fiddles and accordions as they played a jig. People were clapping, shouting out. God, it was all so provincial.

  Rory straightened his tie, and with his whisky still burning in his throat, and now his stomach too, he moved along to the gap in the curtains and slid through, back into the ballroom, where people sat drinking at long wooden tables and groups of dancers went whirling round in complicated, ever-changing patterns, all flowing dresses and clasping hands and big red sweaty faces and white shirts and ties and nar
row trousers or — even worse — kilts.

  Rory moved near the stage, behind the tables where Kenneth and Mary sat, talking to mum. Boring Hamish and the horse-resembling Antonia were on the floor, him in a kilt, her still in her white bridal gown, both dancing badly and out of time, but seemingly thoroughly enjoying themselves.

  "Well," he heard his mum saying, "you two had better get a move on, or Hamish and Antonia will beat you to it." She laughed and drank from her glass. She wore a hat. Rory hated his mother in a hat. He thought she sounded drunk. Kenneth and Mary smiled uncertainly at each other.

  "Well, mum," Kenneth said, sitting back, filling his pipe. "We have been practising."

  "Kenneth!" his wife said quietly.

  Mum shook her head. "Ah, don't mind me; plenty of time yet, I dare say." She looked into her empty glass. "I wouldn't be missing grandchildren so much, but… " She shrugged. There was an awkward silence between the three people then, while the music played and the dancers whooped and shouted and clapped and stamped. Rory saw his mother's shoulders move once, and she put her head down for a second, sniffed. She reached down for her handbag on the floor. Kenneth handed her his hanky. He put his arm round his mum's shoulders. Mary moved her seat closer, reached out and took one of the older woman's hands in hers.

  "God, I miss that old devil," mum said, and blew her nose. Eyes bright with tears, she looked at Mary, and then saw Rory standing behind and to one side of them. "Rory," she said, trying to sound all right. We wondered where you were. Are you enjoying yourself, darling?"

  Yes," he lied. He hated her calling him "darling'. He stayed where he was because he didn't want to get close enough for them to smell his breath. His mother smiled.

  "Good lad. See if you can find your cousin Sheila; you said you'd ask her to dance, remember?"

  "Yeah, all right," he said, turning away.

  He didn't like boring cousin Sheila, either. She was about the only girl here who was his own age. It was horrible being this age when nobody else was; they were all either adults or children. He blamed his parents. Mostly he blamed his dad. If he'd looked after himself, not had a heart attack, he'd still be around. That was how thoughtless he'd been. Rory supposed it was the same thoughtlessness that had made dad and mum have him so much later than the rest of their children. People just didn't think, that was the trouble.