The Crow Road

by Iain M. Banks

  He was the last to be found, and for a while delighted in the fact that none of them could find him, even after Lachy had caught the rest and they were all shouting at him to come out so they could have another go. He lay there, feeling the damp breeze coming through the window and tickling the hairs on his bare legs. He listened to the shouts of the others, echoing in the castle’s emptied shell, and to the voices of the crows and the wood pigeons in the trees, and he smelled the dark, wet smell of the moss and weeds that had found a foothold amongst the ruin’s grey stones. He kept his eyes tightly closed, and as he listened to them search for him and call on him, there came a strange, tight, quivery feeling in his tummy which made him want to clench his teeth and bring his knees together and made him worry about wetting his pants.

  I love this here, he thought to himself. I don’t care if there is a war on and Fergus’s uncle got killed in North Africa, and Wullie Watt got killed in the North Atlantic and Lachy gets hit by his dad and we might have to move to another house because Mr Urvill wants ours back and I don’t understand trigonometry and the Germans do invade us; I love this. If I died right now I wouldn’t care; wouldn’t care at all.

  Lachy climbed right up onto the top of the walls eventually, and only then did he see Kenneth. Kenneth came down, yawning widely and rubbing his eyes and claiming he had fallen asleep. He’d won, had he? Oh, jolly good.

  They played some more, and made fun of Fergus after he’d won a game because Kenneth had worked out what the two little rooms at the top of the second set of stairs were; they were toilets, and that was why the chimneys led down and went out of the castle; it was so all the number one and numbers twos could fall down there. Fergus had hidden down a latrine! And him worried about getting his clothes dirty, too! Fergus denied they were toilets; they were completely clean and didn’t smell at all and they must be chimneys.

  ‘Chimneys, ma arse!’ Lachy laughed. ‘They’re shite-holes!’

  (Emma tutted, but couldn’t help smiling.)

  ‘Chimneys!’ Fergus insisted desperately, blinking hard. He looked at Kenneth as though expecting him to agree. Kenneth looked down at the tramped-down earth under his feet.

  ‘They’re shite-holes, so they are,’ laughed Lachy. ‘And you’re just a big jobbie!’

  ‘Chimneys,’ Fergus protested, his voice rising, his face going red.

  ‘Big jobbie, big jobbie; big smelly jobbie!’ Lachy chanted.

  Kenneth watched Fergus shake with anger while Lachy danced round the interior of the keep, singing out, ‘Big jobbie, big jobbie; big smelly jobbie!’

  Fergus stared angrily at his sister and at Kenneth, as though betrayed, then just stood and waited for Lachy to get bored with his taunting, and as Kenneth watched, a blank, emotionless expression gradually replaced the anger on Fergus’s face.

  Kenneth had the fleeting, extraordinary impression of seeing something buried alive, and felt himself shake suddenly, almost spastically, shivering.

  ‘... jobbie, jobbie; big smelly jobbie!’

  In the last game, Kenneth hid with Emma Urvill in one of the dungeons, showing her how to turn her back to the light and put the hood of her coat up to hide her face, and sure enough when Ilsa came to the door of the dungeon - and he felt that quivering, scary, glorious feeling in his tummy again - she didn’t see them, and they hugged each other once she had gone, and the hug was warm and tight and he liked it and she didn’t let go, and after a while they put their mouths together and kissed. He felt a strange echo of that terrifyingly wonderful sensation in his belly and his heart, and he and Emma Urvill held onto each other for ages, until all the others were caught.

  Later, they played in the tangling undergrowth of the walled garden, and found an old over-grown fountain with the stone statue of a naked lady in it, and an old shed at one corner where there were ancient tins and jars and bottles with Victorian-looking writing on them. The rain came on for a while and they all stayed in there, Fergus complaining about his bike rusting, his sister and Kenneth exchanging the occasional sly look, Ilsa staring out at the rain and saying there were places in South America where it hadn’t stopped raining for hundreds of years, and Lachy mixing various sticky, treacley subtances together from the shelves of old bottles and tins, trying to find a combination that would explode, or at least burn, while the rain hammered then whispered then dripped on the tarred roof overhead, and plopped through holes onto the springy wooden floor of the shed.

  ‘Of course, we haven’t moved all the bottles yet,’ Fergus said, pointing with his pipe at the still unfilled racks that covered the wall of the cellar. The cellar was painted white, and lit by naked bulbs; wires hung and there were un-plastered holes for cables and plumbing leading through the walls and up to other floors. The wood and metal wine racks gleamed, as did the two hundred or so bottles that had already been stored.

  ‘Should keep you going for a bit, eh, Fergus?’ he grinned. ‘Once you’ve filled this lot up.’

  ‘Mmm. We were thinking of touring a few vineyards next summer,’ Urvill said, scratching his thick chin with his pipe. ‘Bordeaux; the Loire, that sort of thing. Don’t know if you and Mary fancy making a foursome or not, hmm?’

  Fergus blinked. Kenneth nodded. ‘Well, perhaps. Depends on holidays and that sort of thing. And the kids, of course.’

  ‘Oh,’ Fergus said, frowning as he picked a little sliver of tobacco off his Pringle sweater. ‘We weren’t thinking of taking the children.’

  ‘Ah, well, no; of course not,’ Kenneth said, as they went to the door. Fergus switched the lights out in the various cellars and they went up the stone-flagged steps towards the utility room and kitchen.

  It was that cellar, he thought to himself as he followed Fergus’s Hush Puppies up the steps. That was where I hid with Emma Urvill, and kissed her. That cellar; I’m sure it was that one. And that window I was looking out earlier; that was the one I hid in that day, nearly thirty years ago; I’m certain.

  He felt a terrible weight of time and loss settle on him then, and a slight feeling of resentment at the Urvills in general and Fergus in particular, for having - with so little thought - stolen part of his memories from him. At least malice might have acknowledged the value of his nostalgia.

  ‘Ferg, this dishwasher’s like a Chinese Puzzle,’ Fiona stood up from the recalcitrant machine, then saw her brother and smiled broadly, came towards him, hugging.

  ‘Hiya, Ken. Been getting the guided tour, have you?’

  ‘Yes; very impressive.’ Kenneth kissed his sister’s cheek. How old had she been when he’d come out here with Fergus and the rest? About two, he guessed. Not old enough to come all this way on a bike. He must have been eight or nine. He wondered where Hamish had been; ill, maybe. He’d always been taking colds.

  Fiona Urvill, née McHoan, wore old flared Levis and a loose green blouse knotted over a white T-shirt. Her copper-coloured hair was tied back. ‘How’re you?’

  ‘Oh, I’m well,’ Kenneth nodded; he kept an arm round her waist as they walked over to the dishwasher, where Fergus crouched, consulting the instruction booklet. The door of the dishwasher was hinged open like a drawbridge.

  ‘Appears to be written in code, my dear,’ Fergus said, scratching the side of his head with his pipe. Kenneth felt a smile form on his face as he looked down at the man. Fergus seemed old before his time: the Pringle jumper, the Hush Puppies, even the pipe. Of course, Kenneth could remember when he used to smoke a pipe; but that had been different. Looked like Fergus was losing his hair already, too.

  ‘How’s school?’ Fiona asked her brother.

  ‘Och, getting on,’ he said. ‘Getting on.’ He had been promoted to Principal Teacher in English the previous autumn. His sister always wanted to know how things were going at the high school, but he usually felt reluctant to talk about work around her and Fergus. He wasn’t sure why, and he suspected he probably wouldn’t like acknowledging the reason, if he ever did work it out. He was even more chary about revealing he
was writing down some of the stories he’d told the kids over the years, hoping to publish them some day. He was worried people might think he was trying to out-do Rory, or - worse still - think he hoped to use him as a contact, an easy way in.

  ‘No, I tell a lie,’ Fergus admitted. ‘Here’s the English bit. Well, American, anyway.’ He sighed, then looked round. ‘Talking about English-speaking furriners, McHoan; you still all right for the International next Saturday?’

  ‘Oh aye,’ Kenneth nodded. They were meant to be going to the Scotland-England rugby game in a week’s time. ‘Who’s driving?’

  ‘Umm, thought we’d take the Morgan, actually.’

  ‘Oh God, Fergus, must we? I’m not sure I can find my bobblehat.’

  ‘Oh, come on man,’ Fergus chuckled. ‘Thought we’d try a new route: down to Kintyre; across to Arran, Lochranza to Brodick; Land Ardrossan and then the A71 to the A of the N. Strikes and power cuts permitting, of course.’

  ‘Fergus,’ Kenneth said, putting one hand to his brow. ‘It sounds enormously complicated.’ He refused to rise to the bait about strikes and power cuts. He guessed that ‘A of the N’ meant Athens of the North. ‘Are you sure the Lochranza ferry runs outside the high season, anyway?’

  Fergus looked troubled, stood up. ‘Oh, it must, mustn’t it? Well, I think it does.’

  ‘Might be best to check.’

  ‘Righty-oh, will do.’

  ‘Anyway, couldn’t we take the Rover?’ Kenneth wasn’t keen on the Morgan; its stiff ride hurt his back and gave him a headache, and Fergus drove too fast in the ancient open-top. Maybe it was the sight of all that British Racing Green paint and the leather strap across the bonnet. The Rover, 3.5 though it was, seemed to calm Fergus a little.

  ‘Oh, come on man, where’s your sense of occasion?’ Fergus chided. ‘The hotel won’t let us into the car park if we show up in the Rover,’

  ‘Oh God,’ Kenneth sighed, and squeezed his sister’s waist. ‘The Morgan it is then.’ he looked at Fiona. Those green eyes sparkling. ‘I’m getting old, sis. Do you think I’m getting old?’

  ‘Positively ancient, Ken.’

  ‘Thanks. How’re the twins?’

  ‘Oh, glowing.’

  ‘Still taking them to Windscale for their hols then, are you?’

  ‘Ha! Oh, Ken, you’re still so comparatively witty.’

  ‘Have you tried switching it on?’ Fergus suggested, squatting on the floor in front of the dishwasher again. His voice echoed inside the machine as he tried to stick his head inside amongst the racks.

  ‘Don’t be catty, Ferg,’ Fiona told him. She smiled at her brother. ‘Haven’t seen young Rory out here for a while, and he never calls us; he okay?’

  ‘Still in that squat in Camden, last we heard, living off his ill-gotten sub-continental gains.’

  ‘A squat?’ Fergus said, words muffled. ‘Thought he made a packet on that ... travel book thingy.’

  ‘He did,’ Ken nodded.

  ‘About India, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Ferg,’ Fiona said, exasperated. ‘You bought the book, remember?’

  ‘Of course I remember,’ Fergus said, reaching into the dishwasher to fiddle with something. ‘Just haven’t read it, that’s all. Who needs to read a book to find out about India? Just go to bloody Bradford ... What’s he doing living in a squat?’

  Ken ground his teeth for a second, looking appraisingly at Fergus’s ample rear. He shrugged. ‘He just likes living with the people there. He’s a social animal, Ferg.’

  ‘Have to be a bloody animal to live in a squat,’ Fergus muttered, echoing.

  ‘Hoi, don’t be horrible about my brother,’ Fiona said, and tapped Fergus’s backside with her foot.

  Fergus glanced quickly round and glared at her, his plump, slightly reddened face suddenly grim. Kenneth felt his sister stiffen next to him. Then Fergus gave a little wavering smile, and with a quiet grunt turned back to the opened machine and its instruction booklet. Fiona relaxed again.

  Kenneth wondered if things were really all right with the couple. He thought he sensed a tension between them sometimes, and a couple of years earlier, not long after the twins had been born, he’d thought Fergus and Fiona had seemed distinctly cold towards each other. He had worried for them, and he and Mary had discussed it, wondering what might have caused this unhappiness, and if there was anything they could do (they had decided there wasn’t, not unless they were asked). Still, he had tried broaching the subject with Fergus once, after a dinner party, while they nursed whiskies in the conservatory of the old Urvill house and watched the lights of the navigation buoys and lighthouses scattered around and through the Sound of Jura as they winked on and off.

  Fergus hadn’t wanted to talk. Mary had had no more success with Fiona. And anyway it had all seemed to come gradually right again.

  Maybe I’m just jealous, he thought to himself, as Fiona pulled away from him and went to the big new Aga, sitting squat, cream and gleaming against one wall of whitewashed stone. She put a hand over part of the cooker’s surface, gauging the heat. The silence in the kitchen went on.

  Kenneth had never given Freud much credence; mainly because he had looked as honestly into himself as he could, found much that was not to his taste, found a little that was even just plain bad, but nothing much that fitted with what Freud’s teachings said he ought to find. Still, he wondered if he did resent Fergus, at least partly because he had taken his sister away, made her his.

  Well, you never knew, he supposed. Maybe everybody’s theories were right, maybe the whole world and every person, and all their relationships within it were utterly bound up with one another in an intricate, entangled web of cause and effect and underlying motive and hidden principle. Maybe all the philosophers and all the psychologists and all the theoreticians were right ... but he wasn’t entirely sure that any of it made much difference.

  ‘Mary and the kids with you?’ Fiona said, turning from the Aga to look at him.

  ‘Taking in the view from the battlements,’ Kenneth told her.

  ‘Good,’ she nodded. She glanced at her husband. ‘We’re getting an observatory, did Ferg tell you?’

  ‘No.’ He looked, surprised, at the other man, who didn’t turn round. ‘No, I didn’t know. You mean a ... a telescope; an astronomical observatory?’

  ‘Bloody astronomically expensive,’ Fergus said, voice echoing in the dishwasher.

  ‘Yes,’ Fiona said. ‘So Ferg can spend his nights star-gazing.’ Mrs Urvill looked at her husband, still squatting in front of the opened machine, with an expression Kenneth thought might have been scorn.

  ‘What’s that, my dear?’ Fergus asked, looking over at his wife, an open, innocent expression on his face.

  ‘Nothing,’ his wife said brightly, voice oddly high.

  ‘Hmm,’ Fergus adjusted something inside the dishwasher, scratched above his ear with his pipe again. ‘Jolly good.’

  Kenneth looked away then, to the windows, where the rain spattered and ran.

  Conceived in a howling gale, Verity was born - howling - in one, too. She came into the world a month before she was due, one windy evening in August 1970, by the shores of Loch Awe - a birth-place whose title, Prentice at least had always thought, could hardly have been more apt.

  Her mother and father had been staying at Fergus and Fiona Urvill’s house in Gallanach for the previous two weeks, on holiday from their Edinburgh home. For the last night of their holiday the young couple decided to visit a hotel at Kilchrenan, an hour’s drive away to the north east up the side of the loch. They borrowed Fergus’s Rover to make the journey. The bulging Charlotte had that week developed a craving for salmon, and duly dined on salmon steaks, preceded by strips of smoked salmon and followed by smoked salmon mousse, which she chose in preference to a sweet. She complained of indigestion.

  Well - if in Charlotte’s case rather monotonously - fed, they began the return journey. The evening was dull, and although
there was no rain a strong warm wind was blowing, waving the tops of the trees and stroking lines of white breakers up the length of the narrow loch. The gale increased to storm force as they drove south west into it, down the single-track road on the western shore.

  The narrow road was littered with fallen branches; it was probably one of those that produced the puncture.

  And so, while her husband struggled with over-enthusiastically-tightened wheel-nuts, Charlotte went into labour.

  Barely half an hour later a stunning blue flash - the colour of the moon and brighter than the sun - burst over the scene from the hill above.

  The noise was thunderous.

  Charlotte screamed.

  Above, on the hillside, stood the lattice forms of two electricity pylons, straddling the heather like grey gigantic skeletons wreathed in darkness. The black wind howled and there was another blinding flash and a titanic concussion; a line of violet incandescence split the night mid-way between the two huge pylons as energy short-circuited through the air between the wind-whipped power-lines.

  Charlotte screamed again, and the child was born.

  The tail end of Hurricane Verity passed over the British Isles that night; it had been born in the doldrums, cut its teeth flooding bits of the Bahamas, flirted with the coast of North Carolina, and then swept off across the North Atlantic, gradually losing energy; a brief encounter with the angle between a cold front and a warm front just off Ireland refreshed it unexpectedly, and it trashed numerous pleasure boats, rattled a few acres of windows, played frisbee with a multitude of slates and broke many a bough as it passed over Scotland.

  The stretch of the national electricity grid down the western shore of Loch Awe towards Gallanach was one of the storm’s more spectacular victims, and Charlotte always claimed that it was right on the stroke of the final massive arc between the thrashing cables - which tripped circuit breakers in the grid to the north and plunged all of Gallanach into darkness - that her child (wrinkled, blood-flecked and salmon pink) finally slid out into her father’s hands.