The Crow Road

by Iain Banks

  "Yeah," I said, feeling awkward. "Why?"

  He shrugged, studied the board again. "I don't know. I just wondered if there was anything…»

  "Hi guys."

  We both looked over to see Verity, hair in spiky disarray, face soft with sleep, wrapped in a long white towelling dressing gown, padding into the conservatory holding a glass of milk.

  "Morning," I said.

  "Hi there, darlin," Lewis said, swivelling so she could sit on his lap. She put her head on his shoulder and he kissed her forehead. "You okay?"

  She nodded sleepily. Then she straightened, drank some milk and ruffled Lewis's hair. "Might get dressed," she said, yawning. "Been having nightmares."

  "Aw," Lewis said tenderly. "You poor thing. Want me to come to bed?"

  Verity sat on Lewis's lap, rocking back and forth a little, her bottom lip pouting. She frowned and said, "No." She smoothed Lewis's hair again. "I'll get up. You finish your game." She smiled at me, then looked up. "Nearly dawn."

  "Why, so it is," I said. Beyond the glass of the conservatory there was just the faintest hint of grey in the sky over the house.

  Verity waved bye-bye and went off, head down, rubbing her eyes, back into the house.

  I moved the bishop. Lewis sat and thought.

  I had won a knight and another pawn for the bishop when Verity came back. She was washed and dressed; she looked fabulous in leggings and a black maternity dress with a black leather jacket over the top. She stood at the doors, clapped her hands together and — when we appeared quizzical — waved some keys at us and said, "Fancy a drive?"

  We looked at each other and both shrugged at the same time.

  We took Lewis and Verity's new soft-top XR3i — roof down, heater up full — out into the grey-pink dawn and drove through Lochgilphead and then into Gallanach and just cruised about the town, waving at the people still walking around the place and shouting Happy New Year! at one and all. Lewis and I had brought the whisky, just in case we met anybody we felt we ought to offer a dram. So we started with each other, and all that water during the night must have done us the power of good because the whisky tasted great.

  (I'd looked back at the castle, as we'd passed the hill on the outskirts of Gallanach, feeling guilty and ashamed and nervous because I still hadn't done anything about my suspicions, but telling myself that I still didn't have any real evidence, and anyway I was off-duty now; this was the season to have fun, after all. Hogmanay; let's-get-oot-oor-brains time. And, naturally, an end-of-year truce. Hell, it was traditional.)

  "Let's go down Shore Road and drop some whisky on that grave dad hit!" Lewis shouted suddenly. "Mr Andrew McDobbie 1823–1875 and his wife Moira 1821–1903 deserve to be thought of at this time!"

  "Ugh, you ghoul," said Verity.

  "No," I said. "It's a great idea. Verity; to the church!"

  Which is how we came to find Helen Urvill and Dean Watt wandering through Gallanach along Shore Road, arm in arm. Dean was playing — necessarily softly — on his Stratocaster, while Helen held a bottle of Jack Daniels. They were being followed by a bemused-looking dog.

  "Happy New Year!" shouted Dean Watt, and struck a chord. There ensued a great deal of Happy New Years; the mongrel that had been following Helen and Dean joined in by barking.

  There were lots of hugs and handshakes and kisses too, before Helen Urvill yelled, "Yo Verity!" as she hung on Dean's shoulder and breathed bourbon fumes at us. "You sober, girl?"

  "Yep," Verity nodded briskly. "Want a lift anywhere?"

  Helen swung woozily round to look at Dean, who was fiddling with a machine-head. "Well, we were heading back for the castle… " She frowned deeply, and her eyes flicked around a bit. "I think… " She shrugged; her thick black eyebrows waggled. "But if you're going somewhere…»

  "Let's go somewhere," Verity said to Lewis, who was in the passenger's seat. "Somewhere further." She nudged Lewis.

  "Okay," Lewis said. "Got a full tank; where we going to go?"

  "Oban!"

  "Boring!"

  "Glasgow!"

  "What for?"

  "How about," I suggested, over the noise of the barking hound. "That bit north of Tighnabruaich, where you can look out over the Kyles of Bute? That's a nice bit of scenery."

  "Brilliant!" Lewis said.

  "Great idea!"

  "Let's go!"

  "Get in, then."

  "And let's take the dog."

  "Is it car-trained?"

  "Who cares? We can point it over the side if it comes to it."

  "Fuck it, yeah, let's take the mutt."

  "Might not want to come," Dean said, and handed the Fender to Lewis, who put it at his feet with the neck by the door, while Dean knelt down by the side of the dog, which was sniffing at the rear wheel of the Escort.

  "Course it wants to come," Helen said, with the conviction only the truly drunk can muster. "Not a dog been born doesn't like sticking its nose out a car window."

  "Here you go," grunted Dean, lifting a puzzled-looking canine of medium build, indeterminate breed and brownly brindled coat into the car and onto my lap.

  "Hey, thanks," I said, as Helen clambered in beside me and Dean squeezed in on her far side. "So it's me that gets to find out if this beast's shit-scared of driving."

  "Ah, stop whining," Helen said, and pulled the fishy-smelling dog away from me to plonk it in Dean's lap.

  "All set?" asked Verity.

  "I wonder if its wee eyes'll light up when the brakes go on?" Dean said, trying to look into them.

  "All set!" Helen yelled, then did some yodelling as we did a U-turn and went smoothly back through the town. Helen offered me some Jack Daniels, which I accepted. We still shouted Happy New Year! at people, and the dog barked enthusiastically in accompaniment; it didn't seem in the least discomfited when we left Gallanach and headed through Lochgilphead and away.

  We stopped briefly at Lochgair. I ran into the house. Mum was up, washing dishes. I kissed and hugged her and said we'd be a few hours. Not to worry; Verity was bright as a button and so sober it ought to constitute a crime in Scotland at this time on a Hogmanay morning. She told me to make sure nobody else drove, then, and be careful. She made me take a load of sandwiches, dips and God-knows what, two bottles of mineral water and a flask of coffee she'd just made, and I staggered out the house and had to put most of it in the convertible's rather small boot, but then that was that and off we went through the calm, brightening day, playing lots of very loud music and munching through the various bits and pieces of food I hadn't stashed in the boot. Dog liked the garlic dip best.

  * * *

  "I don't give a fuck what colour he is; a man who can't pronounce his own name shouldn't be in charge of the most destructive military machine the world has ever seen," I heard Lewis say, while I sat looking at Dean Watt, and thought, Shit, not again.

  "She did, did she?" I said, trying to look pleased. "Well. Good for her. Nice chap, is he?"

  Dean shrugged. "Okay, ah suppose."

  We were sitting on the rocks beyond the car-park crash barrier at the viewpoint above West Glen, overlooking the Kyles of Bute. The island itself stretched away to the south, all pastel and shade in the slightly watery light of this New Year's morning. The waters of the sound looked calmly ruffled, reflecting milky stretches of the lightly clouded sky.

  Damn, I thought.

  Ashley had got off with somebody at Liz and Droid's party. Dancin and winchin, as Dean had put it. Then gone off together. And suddenly I felt like it had happened again. Maybe not quite as stylish as jumping off your uncle's Range Rover into your future husband's arms, but just as effective. My heart didn't exactly go melt-down this time, but it still wasn't too pleasant a feeling.

  Dean seemed happy to adjust his Strat and pick out the occasional tiny, tinny-sounded phrase; Lewis and Verity and Helen were arguing about the coming war. Or at least Lewis was ranting and they were having to listen.

  "Aw, Hell," Lewis said. "I'm not arguing he
isn't an evil bastard…

  Ashley, I thought, staring out into the view. Ashley, what was I thinking of? Why had I taken it so slow? What had I been frightened of? Why hadn't I said anything?

  Hadn't I known what it was I wanted to say?

  " — democracy and freedom, what Our Brave Boys are actually going to be fighting for is to restore the nineteenth century to Kuwait and defend the seventeenth century in Saudi Arabia."

  Now I thought I knew what I wanted to say, but it might already be too late. The knowledge and the provenance of its uselessness were the same; a feeling of loss I couldn't deny. Did that mean I was in love with her? If I was, it felt quite different from what I'd felt for Verity. (Verity sat at Lewis's side, huddled in her leggings and leathers and wearing Lewis's startlingly bright skiing jacket, all orange and purple and lime; she looked like a little psychedelic blonde Buddha perched on the tartan car rug.) Something calmer than that, something slower.

  " — ternational law is only so goddman sacrosanct when it isn't something awkward like the World Court telling America to quit mining Nicaraguan harbours."

  But perhaps I was wrong about Ash being interested in me, anyway. Ashley was the one I remembered talking to in the Jac that evening after Grandma Margot's cremation; she was the one who kept telling me to tell Verity I loved her. If you love her, tell her. Wasn't that what she'd said? So if Ashley felt anything for me beyond friendship, why hadn't she said anything to me? And if she did feel anything, what was she doing going off with this friend of Droid's?

  " — next time the US wants to invade somewhere and see what happens; out'll come that good old veto again. Heck, we got lots of practice using that. We'll do it if the Yanks don't. Panama? This place with the ditch? You don't like the guy in power any more after paying him all that CIA drug money over the years? Ah, why not? On you go. Seven thousand dead? Never mind, we can hush that up."

  Could I finally be right, and a woman was taking up with somebody else to make me feel jealous? I doubted it. Maybe she had been patiently waiting for me to tell her how I felt, or make some sort of move, and now she was fed up waiting, so all bets were off. But why should she have been so passive? Was Ashley that old-fashioned? Didn't sound like it; from what she'd told me, it was her who went after that Texan systems analyst, not the other way round. If she'd fancied me at all she'd have said or done something about it before now, wouldn't she?

  " — resolutions are fine, unless they're against Israel, of course, in which case, Aw sheeit; you guys just stay in them Golan Heights, and that Gaza Strip. Shoot; them Palestinians probably weren't — aw, gosh-darn; did I say shoot them Palestinians? Well, hell no, we won't mention that. Twenty-three years the Israelis have been ignoring UN resolutions and occupying foreign territory; south, east and north. Hell's teeth, they'd probably invade the Mediterranean if you told them the fish were Palestinian. But does the US lay siege to them? Impose sanctions? Like fuck, they bank-roll the place!"

  Maybe she did think of me as a brother. All those times I'd rambled drunkenly away to her about how much I loved Verity and what a hard time I was getting from everybody, and how wonderful Verity was, and what a poor, hard-done-by kid I was, and how much I loved Verity and how nobody understood me, and how wonderful Verity was… How could you expect anybody to listen to all that moronic, self-pitying, self-deluding crap for so long and not think. Poor jerk?

  " — we paid him to fight the Iranians for us, but now the scumbag's getting uppity, so we'll pay other scumbags like Assad to help fight him, and it'll all happen —»

  Unloading all that stuff on Ash; most people would have told me to fuck off, but she listened, or at least didn't interrupt… but what must she have been thinking? The response just couldn't be, Oh, he's so sensitive, or Oh, what a deep capacity for lurve this young fellow has… Poor jerk. That about covered it. Or just, Jerk.

  " — a modern day Hitler it's Pol Pot; even Saddam Hussein hasn't obliterated two million of his own people. But does the West mount a crusade against that genocidal mother-fucker? No! We're supporting the vicious scumbag! The United fucking States of America and the United fucking Kingdom think he's just the bee's knees because he's fighting those pesky Vietnamese who had the nerve to beat Uncle Sam —»

  But maybe she hadn't really got off with this guy. Maybe it was all a mistake, maybe there was still a chance. Oh shit, I thought, and watched a seagull glide smoothly through the air below us, over the tops of the trees and the bundled rocks that led down to the distant shore.

  "Oh," said Verity suddenly, and clutched her belly, and looked wide-eyed at Lewis, who was in full flight over the vexed sands of Kuwait, and apparently quite beyond verbal interception.

  " — Sabra and Chatila; ask the Kurds in Halabja — " He stopped dead, looked at his wife, who was still clutching her belly, looking pleadingly at him.

  Lewis's jaw dropped and his face went white.

  Verity hugged herself, put her head between her knees and started to rock back and forth. "Oh-oh," she said.

  Lewis staggered to his feet, hands flailing, while Verity's shoulders started to quiver. The dog, which had been snoozing at Lewis's feet, jumped up too.

  "Verity, what's wrong? Is it —?" began Helen, leaning over and putting an arm on Verity's shoulders.

  "Who's the least drunk?" Lewis hollered, gaze oscillating rapidly between the car parked a few metres behind us and his wife, sitting rocking back and forth and shaking. The dog barked, bouncing up on its front feet, then sneezing.

  "Oh! Oh! Oh!" said Verity, as Helen hugged her.

  "Aw Christ," said Dean. "Verity, you're no about to drop, are ye?"

  Lewis stood with his hands out, fingers splayed, eyes closed, on the rock. "I don't believe this is happening!" he yelled. The dog barked loudly in what sounded like agreement.

  Helen Urvill, her face down at Verity's knees — where Verity's head was still wedged — suddenly slapped Verity across the back and rolled away, laughing.

  Dean looked confused. I felt the same way, then realised.

  Lewis opened his eyes and stared at Helen lying laughing on the rock.

  Verity rose quickly and gracefully, her face pink and smiling.

  She stepped up to Lewis and hugged him, rocking him, her face tipped up to his as she giggled. "Joke," she told him. "It isn't happening. I keep telling you, this baby's going to be born in a nice warm birthing pool in a nice big hospital. Nowhere else."

  Lewis sagged. He might have fallen if Verity hadn't held him. He slapped both hands over his face. "You unutterable… minx!" he roared, and put a hand to each side of Verity's grinning face, holding her head and shaking it. She just giggled.

  So we sat and had some coffee and sandwiches.

  "Damn fine coffee," muttered Lewis.

  Well, he had a tartan shirt on.

  * * *

  We drove back later; I watched buzzards and crows and gulls stoop and wheel and glide across the under-surface of thickening grey cloud. We were all very tired save Verity, and I must have fallen asleep because it came as a surprise when we had to stop to put the top up, in Inveraray, when the rain came on. It was a cramped, claustrophobic journey after that, and the dog whined a lot and smelled.

  We got to Lochgair; I staggered into the house, collapsed into my bed and slept for the rest of the day.

  I kept missing Ashley after that. Whenever I rang the Watt house she was out, or asleep. She rang me once, but I'd been out walking. Next time I called she had caught the train for Glasgow, en route for the airport and London.

  Tone and Hamish's usual post-Hogmanay soirée had been even more subdued than usual. Hamish had given up drink, but apparently found his heretical ideas on retribution more difficult to jettison, and so spent most of the evening telling me — with a kind of baleful enthusiasm — about a Commentary he was writing on the Bible, which cast new light on punishment and reward in the hereafter, and which had great contemporary relevance.

  I drove back to Glasgow on
the fifth of January. After New Year's Eve, watching Fergus show off his new plane, I hadn't visited the castle again.

  * * *

  Two weeks later, after I had had my abbreviated conversation with Lachlan Watt in sunny Sydney, I set off for Lochgair at nine that Friday morning, listening to the war on the radio for as long as I could, until the mountains blocked out the signal.

  War breaks out amongst the oilfields and the price of crude plummets. From being an ally so staunch he can missile American ships and it passes as an understandable mistake, and gas thousands of Kurds with barely a gesture of censure (Thatcher promptly increased his export credits, and within three weeks Britain was talking about all the lovely marketing opportunities Iraq represented; for chemicals, presumably), Saddam Hussein had suddenly become Adolf Hitler, despite more or less being invited to walk into Kuwait.

  It was a war scripted by Heller from a story by Orwell, and somebody would be bombing their own airfield before too long, no doubt.

  From Glasgow to Lochgair is a hundred and thirty-five kilometres by road; less as the crow flies, or as the missile cruises. The journey took about an hour and a half, which is about normal when the roads aren't packed with tourists and caravans. I spent most of the time shaking my head in disbelief at the news on the radio, and telling myself that I mustn't allow this to distract me from confronting Fergus, or at the very least sharing my suspicions with somebody other than Ash.

  But I think I already knew that was exactly what would happen.

  And Ash… God, the damn thing may be just muscle, merely a pump, but my heart really did seem to ache whenever I thought of her.

  So I tried not to think about Ashley Watt at all, utterly unsure whether by doing so I was being very strong, or extremely stupid. I chose not to make an informed guess which; my track record didn't encourage such honesty.

  * * *

  Mum dropped her laser-guided bombshell over lunch that day. We were sitting in the kitchen, watching the war on television, dutifully listening to the same reports and watching the same sparse bits of footage time after time. I was already starting to get bored with the twin blue-pink glowing cones of RAF Tornadoes" afterburners as they took off into the night, and even the slo-mo footage of the exciting Brit-made JP-233 runway-cratering package scattering bomblets and mines with the demented glee of some Satanic Santa was already inducing feelings of weary familiarity.