The Crow Road

by Iain M. Banks

  And Aunt Janice never did remember any more about whatever Rory had hidden in his later work.

  Mum sipped her coffee. I tore the Danish to bits, imagining it was Lewis’s flesh. Or Verity’s underclothes - I was a little confused at the time.

  Well, let them get married. The earlier the better; it would end in tears. Let them rush into it, let them repent at leisure. They weren’t right for each other and maybe a marriage would last a shorter time than a more informal, less intense liaison; brief and bitter, both of them on proximity fuses with things coming rapidly to a crunch, rather than something more drawn out, where they might spend long periods apart and so forget how much they hated being together, and enjoy the fleeting, passionate moments of reunion ...

  I fumed and bittered away while my mother finished her coffee and made concerned remarks about how thin and pale I was looking. I ate another Danish; mother told me everybody else was fine, back home.

  ‘Come back, Prentice,’ she said, putting one hand out across the table to me. Her brown eyes looked hurt. ‘This weekend, come back and stay with us. Your father misses you terribly. He’s too proud to -’

  ‘I can’t,’ I said, pulling my hand away from hers, shaking my head. ‘I need to work this weekend. Got a lot to do. Finals coming up.’

  ‘Prentice,’ my mother whispered. I was looking down at my plate, licking my finger and picking off the last few crumbs, transferring them to my mouth. I could tell mum was leaning forward, trying to get me to meet her eyes, but I just frowned, and with my moistened finger-tip cleared my plate. ‘Prentice; please. For me, if not for your dad.’

  I looked up at her for a moment. I blinked quickly. ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘I don’t know. Let me think about it.’

  ‘Prentice,’ my mother said quietly, ‘say you will.’

  ‘All right,’ I said, not looking at her. I knew I was lying but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I couldn’t send her away thinking I could be so heartless and horrible, but I also knew that I wasn’t going to go home that weekend; I’d find an excuse. It wasn’t that this dispute between my dad and me about whether there was a God or not really meant anything any more, but rather the fact of the history of the dispute - the reality of its course, not the substance of the original disagreement - was what prevented me from ending it. It was less that I was too proud, more that I was too embarrassed.

  ‘You promise?’ mother said, a slight stitching of her brows as she sat back in the ladder-backed seat the only indication that she might not entirely believe me.

  ‘I promise,’ I nodded. I felt, wretchedly, that I was such a moral coward, such a sickening liar, that making a promise I knew I had no intention whatever of keeping was hardly any worse than what I had already done. ‘I promise,’ I repeated, blinking again, and set my mouth in a firm, determined way. Let there be no way out of it; let me really make this promise. I was so disgusted with myself that I wanted to make myself suffer even more when I did - as I knew I would - break my word. I nodded fiercely and smiled bravely, utterly insincerely, at my mother. ‘I really do promise. Really.’

  We said goodbye outside, in the street. I told her the flat was in too disgusting a state for her to come and visit. She hoisted her umbrella to ward off the light drizzle that had started to fall, gave me a couple of twenty-pound notes, said she’d look forward to seeing me on Friday, kissed my cheek, then went off to do her shopping.

  I had dressed as well as I could that morning, in more or less the same stuff I’d worn for Grandma Margot’s funeral. Minus the lost Möbius scarf, of course. I turned up the collar of my fake biker’s jacket and walked off.

  I gave the money to a thankfully dumb-struck fiddle-player on Sauchiehall Street and walked away feeling like some sort of martyred saint. As I walked, this mood was gradually but smoothly replaced by one of utmost depression, while my body - as though jealous of all the obsessive regard my emotions were receiving - came up with its own demands for attention, evidenced by an unsteady, fluid shifting in my guts, and a cold sweat on my brow.

  I felt fainter and fainter and worse and worse and more and more nauseous, unsure whether it was the bitterness of sibling-thwarted love, or just too much starch and refined sugar. It felt like my stomach had decided to take a sabbatical; all that food was just sitting there, unprocessed, locked in, slopping around and making me feel horrible.

  After a while I stopped telling myself I wasn’t going to be sick, and - resigned to the fact that I was going to have to throw up at some point - kept telling myself instead that I’d manage to hold it in until I was back in the flat, and so do it in private, rather than into the gutter in front of people.

  Eventually I threw up into a litter bin attached to a crowded bus shelter on St George’s Road.

  I was still gagging up the last few dregs when somebody punched me on the cheek, sending the other side of my head banging against the metal wall of the shelter. I spun round and sat down on the pavement, a ringing noise in my head.

  A tramp dressed in tattered, shiny trousers and a couple of greasy-looking, buttonless coats bent down, looking at me. He smelled of last year’s sweat. He gestured angrily up at the litter bin. ‘Ye wee basturt; there might a been somethin good in there!’ He shook his head in obvious disgust and stalked off, muttering.

  I got to my feet, supporting myself on the side of the shelter. A wee grey woman wearing a headscarf peered out at me from the end of the bus queue. ‘You all right, sonny?’ she said.

  ‘Aye,’ I said, grimacing. ‘Missus,’ I added, because it seemed appropriate. I nodded at the bin. ‘Sorry about that; my stomach’s on strike and my food’s coming out in sympathy.’

  She smiled uncomprehendingly at me, looking round. ‘Here’s ma bus son; you look after yoursel, okay?’

  I felt the side of my head where it had hit the bus shelter; a bruise was forming and my eye felt sore. The wee woman got on her bus and went away.

  ‘Oh, Prentice!’ Ash said, more in despair than with disgust. ‘You’re kidding.’ She looked at me in the candle-light. I was past caring about feeling guilt and shame and everything was collapsing anyway, so I just looked straight back at her, resigned, and after a while I shook my head. Then I picked up a bit of naan bread and mopped up my curry sauce.

  The naan bread was big; we’d both stuffed ourselves with it during the meal but it was still big. When it had arrived it had needed a separate table just to accommodate it; luckily the restaurant wasn’t busy. ‘Not so much a naan bread, more a toasted duvet,’ I’d said. Ash had laughed.

  During the course of the meal we’d reduced the blighter to the proportions of a couple of pillows, not to mention disposing of portions of chicken kalija and fish pakora to start, followed by garlic chilli chicken, lamb pasanda, a single portion of pulao rice, and side dishes of Bombay potato and sag panir to accompany. Two dry sherries and a couple of bottles of Nuit St Georges had washed it all down and now we were onto the coffee and brandy. It was Ashley Watt’s treat, of course; I still couldn’t afford to eat out unless it was in the street and out of a paper poke. Ash was passing through Glasgow and staying with us on her way to a new job down in London.

  It was mid-summer, and unseasonably warm for Glasgow; Ash wore a long, rough silk shirt, and leggings. A light cotton jacket hung over the back of her chair. I was still wearing out the regulation Docs and the thick black jeans. I had borrowed one of Norris’s big paramilitary-style fawn shirts to wear as a jacket over my anti Poll Tax T-shirt. I’d left it to the end of the meal before I said anything about being arrested.

  ‘Aw, man,’ Ash said, sitting back slackly in her seat. The candle-light reflected in her glasses. ‘Why, Prentice?’ The Anarkali was dark and quiet and a lot of the light was coming from the candle between us. She looked sad; concerned for me, I thought.

  I rather liked it. I liked the idea of other people feeling sorry for me, even though I also despised them for it, because I wasn’t worth their sympathy and that made them fools
.

  Of course, I despised myself for despising them for showing such genuine and unselfish emotions, but that’s just one of the things you have to get used to when you’re in a serious self-destruction spiral. Mine was feeling rather like a power-dive right now. I shrugged. ‘Why not? I needed the money.’

  ‘But your family’s rich!’

  ‘No, they’re ... Well, they might be fairly well ...’ I smiled, sat closer, took up my brandy and cradled it in front of the candle flame. ‘Actually, there’s quite a good exchange on those lines in Catch-22, the movie - much underrated film - which isn’t in the book, so Buck Henry must have written it, where Nately’s been killed and Yossarian’s been to Milo’s whorehouse to see Nately’s whore and Milo’s picked him up in the half-track and he’s saying Nately died a rich man; he had such-and-such a number of shares in M&M enterprises, and Yossarian says -’

  Ashley was glaring at me over the candle flame the way a hawk must glare at a field mouse the instant before it parts mouse from field forever. I saw this predatory, outraged expression building on Ash’s face like a line of dark clouds on the horizon, and stopped talking, though entirely out of inquisitiveness, not trepidation.

  ‘Shut the fuck up about Catch-22, ya cretin;’ Ash said, storming forward and planting both fore-arms on the table cloth. ‘What the fucking hell are you doin stealing books for money when you’ve no need to, eh? Just what sort of dick-head are you, Prentice? I mean, what the fuck are your parents going to think if they hear? How are they goin to feel? Or is that it? Are they supposed to feel bad? Are you tryin to get back at your dad because of this stupit religious thing? Well, come on; are you?’

  I sat back, amused.

  I played with the dumpy stem of the brandy glass, smirking at Ashley through the candle flame. Ashley’s long hair was tied back and she looked rather attractive, now I thought about it. I wondered what the chances were of bedding the girl. A little recreational fornication would go down quite well just now. I wondered if Ash was into rough sex. I had no idea whether I was into it myself, but for some reason just then the idea seemed rather intriguing. I smiled at her, gave a small laugh. ‘Really, Ashley, I didn’t think you’d take it all so melodramatically. It’s only shop-lifting, after all. Just one silly book, too; worse things happen at C & A’s.’ I sat back, still smiling; legs crossed, arms crossed.

  Ash’s face was close to the flame, its yellow oval glowing like some magical caste-mark on her forehead. Much closer and she’ll melt her glasses, I thought. She appeared to be trying to out-stare me, but actually I’m rather good at that sort of thing when I want to be, and I didn’t let my eyes flicker.

  A waiter was approaching from behind her, I noticed, without taking my eyes off hers; I felt the grin broaden on my lips. The waiter would distract her, especially as she had ordered the meal and was obviously paying, and anyway she almost certainly hadn’t heard the waiter approaching.

  Ash reached one hand out across the table and spilled my brandy into my lap.

  Just as I was reacting, going ‘Wha -!’ and jerking forward, Ash turned smoothly to the waiter and with a broad smile said,

  ‘The bill, please.’

  ‘It does look like I’ve pissed myself!’ I protested as we walked back to the flat. ‘Those people were definitely laughing at me.’

  ‘Oh, shut up, Prentice.’

  ‘You’re telling me to shut up!’ I laughed. The July night was warm and muggy and the traffic rumbled like thunder down Great Western Road. ‘You throw drink all over me, expect to sleep in my flat tonight and you tell me to shut up!’

  Ash paced purposefully on, long flinging strides I was having difficulty in keeping up with. She was still glaring, though straight ahead now. I noticed people coming towards us weren’t getting in her way.

  ‘I didn’t throw the drink, I tipped it,’ she told me. ‘And I’m only coming back to the flat to get my bag, if that’s the way you feel. I’ll sleep in the car. Or find a hotel.’

  ‘I didn’t!’ I protested, waving my arms and running after her as I saw the possibility of getting into Ashley’s increasingly attractive body slipping away from me. ‘I didn’t say that! I just don’t like being told to shut up! I’m sorry! I mean, I’m really sorry I’m annoyed that you spilled - or tipped - drink all over me!’

  Ash stopped so suddenly I wondered where she’d gone for a moment. I turned, looked, and went back to her, standing looking furious in the light of a Spud-U-Like.

  ‘Prentice,’ she said calmly. ‘You’ve practically exiled yourself from your family and your home and your friends, you think you’ve failed your finals but you say you’ve no intention of sitting your re-sits even if you have; you’ve no money and you haven’t even been looking for a job; you’re getting done for shop-lifting and you’re acting like such a fucking dick-head you seem determined to get shot of the last few pals you do have left ... and all you can do is make smart-ass remarks.’

  I looked through her bright red glasses into her light grey eyes and said, ‘Well, so far so good, certainly, but let’s not count our -’

  She stamped on my right big toe, forcing me to produce an involuntary and appallingly undignified yelp. She stormed off; I half limped, half hopped after her.

  ‘Let’s not count our vultures before they’re hatched, eh?’ I laughed. She powered on, ignoring me. I hopped after her. ‘Spare a shekel for a healthy beggar?’ I cackled. ‘Able was I ere I saw Michael; where can you land a Palin? And in what?’

  Ash kicked my other shin. Wonderful girl; didn’t even seem to break stride.

  She disappeared into an off-licence. I waited outside, rubbing my shin and inspecting the damage to my Docs; luckily the scuff on the right toe didn’t show up the way it would have with polished boots.

  Ash reappeared with a bag; she swept past me, briefly showing me the bottle of Grouse it contained. I skipped after her down the street. ‘After trying the fluid on a small unnoticeable area, you now wish to wash all of my trousers the spirited way, am I right, madam? Now; will you swap these two bottles of warm urine for that one bottle of our product?’

  She shook her head, not looking at me. ‘You and I are going to get filthily drunk, Prentice, and if by the time we get to the bottom of this bottle I haven’t got some sort of sense out of you I’m going to break it over your thick fucking skull.’ She turned, beamed a toothy non-smile at me for about a micro-second, then strode determinedly on.

  I tried to keep up. I looked at the bottle in the bag. ‘Couldn’t you just leave the whisky, I’ll drink it all, wake up in the morning - no, make that the afternoon - with a head that feels like you hit me over the skull with the bottle, and you sleep in the car ready for that long and demanding journey down the notoriously dangerous A74 tomorrow?’

  Ash shook her head.

  We got back to Grant Street. I looked up, saw some lights on in the flat. Maybe, I thought, Ash would be so turned on by the sounds of frantic coupling emanating from Gav and Aunt Janice in the bedroom that she’d tear my clothes off. Or maybe Norris and his pals would distract her from this crazed idea of getting air-locked drunk by suggesting a friendly game of cards.

  Ash followed my gaze. She held the bottle up in front of my eyes. ‘Ready for this, Prentice?’

  ‘Drink doesn’t solve anything, you know,’ I told her. ‘Just dissolves brain cells.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’m working on the principle that most people are okay unless they get muroculous with drink, when they become arse-holes; you’re behaving like an arse-hole now, so maybe drink’ll make you okay.’

  I tried to look as sceptical as I could. ‘I bet you believe in crop circles, too.’

  ‘Prentice, I believe you seem determined to fuck your life up, and I just want to know why.’

  ‘Oh,’ I said brightly. ‘That’s easy; my affections have been rejected by the one I love and her carnality is being most thoroughly investigated by my elder and smarter brother on a more or less hourly basis, so I
am spurned and she is spermed; my father believes his children should be free to make up their own minds, but preferably only out of the spare-parts that he provides ... And apart from that ... I mean the exams and getting nicked and stuff ... Well,’ I sighed, looking up to the night sky, where the clouds were starting to blot out the few stars that the city lights did not obscure. I spread my arms wide. ‘... I’m just a waster.’

  Ash looked at me. I could see her chest move in and out inside the light cotton jacket. ‘Naw, Prentice,’ she said quietly, after a while. ‘You’re just a bairn.’

  I shrugged. ‘Maybe. Come on.’ I indicated the close. ‘Let’s get as drunk as you think we have to, and you can tell me all the reasons I’m so childish.’ I glanced at my watch as we headed for the stairs. ‘Better get started, though; we’ve only got all night.’

  We climbed the stairs, reached the flat.

  ‘You know,’ Ash was saying, breathing hard and looking down the stair-well as I opened the door. ‘I don’t know anybody who lives in a flat who doesn’t live on the top floor.’

  ‘Friends in high places,’ I said, opening the door to Janice Rae.

  Aunt Janice was clothed (shirt and jeans), which made rather a refreshing change, and standing in the hallway. She looked distraught. Her eyes were red and her mascara had left what appeared to be a diagram of the Los Angeles freeway system down her cheeks. Beyond her Gav stood looking awkward and sheepish. I glanced from Janice to Gav and back again, while Janice looked at me, lip trembling.

  Let me guess, I thought; they’ve finally done it; they’ve broken the bed.

  ‘Oh, Prentice!’ Janice said suddenly, throwing herself at me and enveloping my upper torso in a hug that would have done credit to a grizzly. I wondered what had brought this on, and how to peel Aunt Janice off. What must Ashley be making of all this? (She’d be getting jealous, with any luck.)

  Janice pulled away; I could breathe again, and promptly did so.