The Crow Road

by Iain M. Banks

  ‘There, Hamish,’ mum said, reaching out and stroking one of his hands.

  ‘What exactly happened, Uncle Hamish?’ I asked. Sounded to me like the man had cracked completely, but I still wanted to see if he could come up with more details.

  ‘Sorry,’ sniffed Hamish, wiping his eyes then blowing his nose into the black hanky. He put the hanky in his breast pocket, clasped his hands on the edge of the tray holding the jigsaw, and lowered his head a little, seeming to address the centre of the puzzle. His thumbs started to circle each other, going round and round.

  ‘We had a few drinks; we’d met in the town. I’d been at the Steam Packet, meeting with some people. Showed them round the factory in the morning. Just paperweights. Man from Harrods. Nice lunch. Thought I’d look for a present for Antonia’s birthday, bumped into Kenneth coming out of the stationer’s. Went for a pint; bit like the old days, really.’

  ‘Here we are,’ Aunt Antonia announced from the door, appearing with a tray full of crockery. There was a pause while tea was poured, biscuits dispensed. ‘Shall I stay here, dear?’ Aunt Tone asked Hamish.

  I thought she looked worse than mum did. Her face was drawn, there were dark shadows under her eyes; even her brown, bunned hair looked greyer than I remembered.

  Her husband ignored her, talking on as before, though now having apparently shifted his attention to the cup of tea Aunt Tone had placed in front of him on the puzzle tray. His thumbs were still circling each other.

  ‘Went to the Argyll Lounge; good view of the harbour from there. Drank pints. It was like when we were younger. Had a cigar. Good chat, really. Rang the office, said I was playing truant. He rang Lochgair. We were going to go for a Chinese meal, just for old time’s sake, but we never got round to it. Thought it would be fun to go on a bit of a pub-crawl, so we went on to the Gallery bar, in the Steam Packet. That was where we started talking about faith.’

  Uncle Hamish stopped talking, took up his cup of tea, sipped quickly from it without raising his gaze from the tray, then replaced the cup in the saucer. ‘He called me a crack-pot,’ Hamish said. His eyebrows rose up his forehead; his voice rose too. Then it fell again as he said, ‘I called him a fool.’

  Hamish looked quickly, furtively, at my mother. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled, and looked forward at the tray and the puzzle again. He sighed; his thumbs kept going round. ‘I told him Christ loved him and he just laughed,’ Hamish complained. ‘He refused to see; he refused to understand. I told him he was like a blind man, like somebody who would not open their eyes; all he had to do was accept Christ into his life and suddenly everything would fall into place. The world would look a different place; a whole new plane of existence would open up. I explained that all we did here was merely a preparation for the next life, where we would be judged, punished and rewarded.’ Hamish shook his head, face radiating dismay. ‘He went all snide, asked me when exactly I’d had the brain by-pass operation.’

  (God - or whatever - help me; at that point, despite it all, I had to stifle a guffaw. I coughed, and dabbed at my suddenly brimming eyes with a tissue.)

  Hamish rattled on. ‘I told him that only religion gave any meaning to life; only God, as an absolute, gave us a ... peg to hang our philosophies on. What was the meaning of life, otherwise? He said, What meaning? He said, How long is a piece of string? and, What colour is the wind?’ Uncle Hamish shook his head again. ‘I told him faith was love, the most beautiful thing in the world. He said it was nonsense, surrendering our humanity. Humanity!’ Hamish scoffed. ‘Religion gives us rules; it can keep people from doing wrong; it helps us be good. But he wasn’t having it, would not listen. “Religion is politics,” he told me, several times. As though repeating it made it true. “Religion is politics! Religion is politics!” Blasphemed. We left the last bar - can’t even remember which one it was, to be honest - and we were walking back here, for a nightcap, I think, coming along Shore Road - I left the car in the Steam Packet Hotel car park, of course - and we had some argument about the Shore Street Church. He said he liked it, liked the architecture, but it was really a testament to the skill of humans, not to the glory of God, and just a symbol. I said it was the house of God, and he’d better not trespass.’ Hamish looked up at mum for a moment. ‘He was walking along the wall, you see.’

  Mum nodded. Hamish was already staring at the tray again.

  ‘He said what was any church or temple but a giant, hollow idol? I told him he was sick; he said he was infected with reason. I said Reason was his God, and it was false; it was the true idol.’ Hamish sighed. ‘The street was wet; there had been rain. I remember noticing that ... Kenneth shouted at me, told me...’ Hamish shook his head. ‘... he said; “Hamish; all the gods are false. Faith itself is idolatry.”’

  Uncle Hamish swivelled his big, grey head and gazed gloomily at me. His eyes looked cold and jelly-like; they reminded me of frog-spawn discovered in some ditch. ‘“All the gods are false. Faith itself is idolatry,”’ Uncle Hamish breathed, staring at me. I shivered. ‘Can you credit that, Prentice?’ He looked down, away from me, shaking his head.

  Hamish returned his gaze to the puzzle tray. His thumbs kept circling. ‘I can’t remember exactly what he said,’ Hamish whispered, and then sighed. ‘But he jumped off the wall and ran over to the church. He started climbing.’

  I heard my mother sob once, very quietly.

  ‘I had to climb over the wall,’ Hamish breathed, ‘Gate was locked. By the time I got there he was out of reach. I thought he was shinning up a drainpipe. Just assumed. Heard rumbles, I think, but ... didn’t think anything of it. No flashes, that I can remember. Kenneth was yelling and swearing and shouting imprecations; calling down all sorts of punishment; I was trying to get him to come down; told him he’d fall; told him the police were coming; told him to think of his family. But he kept climbing.’

  I studied my hands in the pink-tinged light, turning them over and looking at the lines on my palm, the veins on the back. I tried to imagine dad, climbing up that tower, hauling himself up, hand over hand, sweating and straining in the darkness, trusting to his own strength and the cool metal strip beneath his hands.

  The block beneath me was silent now; the last of the waves had retreated from it and were breaking further down the beach as the tide went out. The sky was still gaudy with crimson clouds, though much of the brightness had gone. I glanced at my watch. I ought to be jumping down off this thing and heading back to the road; it was a rough hike over the headland, and dangerous in the dark. But the red streaks of the clouds were dissolving as the sunset went on, leaving the sky clear above me. This near the centre of the year, on a clear night, it would never get totally dark. I had a while yet, but I wouldn’t leave it too late; mum would worry. That would just be the cherry on it, me taking the Crow Road too.

  Uncle Hamish took another sip of his tea, frowned at the cup and spat the tea back into it. ‘Cold,’ he said apologetically to his wife. He dabbed at his lips with his handkerchief. I realised only then I hadn’t touched the cup that Aunt Tone had poured for me.

  Hamish went on: ‘There was a very strange noise, a sort of humming noise seemed to come from under my feet, from the stones of the church. Couldn’t work out what it was, thought it was the drink or just the effect of looking up like that, craning my neck. But it wouldn’t go away, and it got louder and I felt my hair stand on end. I shouted up to Kenneth; he was about half-way up, still climbing. Then there was a flash, a blinding flash.

  ‘Saw a glowing red line in front of me, like a vein of burning blood, like lava, in front of me. Noise terrific. Smell of sulphur; something of that nature; smell of the devil, though I think that was just coincidence. Fell down. Half blind, thought a bomb had gone off. Heard ringing, like the church bells all going on at once.’ Uncle Hamish went to sip from his tea again, then thought the better of it and put the cup back on the saucer. ‘Realised it had been lightning. I still couldn’t believe it; found Kenneth behind me, lying on the grass and a sort
of slab thing, over a grave. Hands burned. Been climbing the lightning conductor, blew him off. Don’t know if that would have killed him, but he’d landed on the stone. Dead. Blood from his head.’ Hamish looked slowly over at mum, who was crying silently. ‘Sorry,’ he told her.

  She didn’t say anything.

  ‘Idiot,’ I whispered, sitting there on Darren’s great grey concrete block. ‘Idiot,’ I said, and for once I wasn’t talking to myself. ‘Idiot!’ I shouted at the sky. ‘IDIOT!’ I bellowed, hands clawing at the pitted concrete surface beneath me. ‘IDIOT!’ I screamed, emptying my lungs to the soft sea airs. Coughing and choking, I sat there, tears in my eyes, breathing hard. Eventually I wiped my nose on my shirt sleeve, feeling like a little kid again, and then sniffed, swallowed, and breathed slower, clenching my teeth to stop my jaw trembling.

  I sat back, shivering, legs out straight in front, arms behind, hands splayed on the rough concrete. I thought about them all. Dad, falling; Grandma Margot, falling. Darren, broken against the tomb-white concrete of a council litter bin; Aunt Fiona, through the windscreen of the Aston Martin, neck snapped, into the young trees by the roadside ... and who knew what had happened to Rory? Well, in a day or two I was going to start trying to find out. So far mum and I - with Ashley’s help - had only dealt with the papers and files we had to, to deal with the legal formalities. But there was a lot more stuff to go through, and somewhere in all that bumf there might be something that would tell us about Uncle Rory, and why dad had always been so sure his brother was still alive.

  But for all we knew he’d died a roadside death, too.

  Uncle Hamish turned to me. ‘Swear he was still alive.’ He nodded, frowning at me. I raised my eyebrows, feeling very cold inside. Hamish nodded again. ‘Still alive; he said something to me. I swear Kenneth said, “See?”’ Hamish shook his head. ‘Said that to me; said, “See?” without opening his eyes.’ He looked down at his rotating thumbs. His frown seemed to stop them. ‘That was what he said; and it was so ... wrong; such a silly, silly thing to say, that I thought I must have only thought I heard it, but I’m sure, that’s what he said. “See?”’ Uncle Hamish shook his head. ‘“See?”’ He kept shaking his head. ‘“See?”’ He turned to me. ‘Can you credit that, Prentice?’

  He looked away again before I could think of what to say. ‘“See?”’ he repeated to the tray with the ruined puzzle, and shook his head again. ‘“See?”’

  ‘Excuse me.’ Mum got up and left the room, crying.

  Hamish stared at the cardboard puzzle. Aunt Antonia sat at the end of the bed, staring hollow-eyed at her silent husband. The tray over Uncle Hamish’s legs started to vibrate. I could see the duvet over Uncle Hamish’s thighs shaking. The bed began to squeak. My uncle stared, appalled, at the tray on his lap, as the little grey pieces of the up-turned puzzle migrated across the vibrating surface of the tray, gradually collecting against one edge.

  The spasms in Uncle Hamish’s legs seemed to grow more severe; the cup of tea I’d put on the bedside table near my right elbow showed a concentric pattern of standing ripples. I suddenly thought of the scene in The Unbelievable Prevalence of Bonking, when the tanks enter Prague. Uncle Hamish made a strange keening noise; Aunt Tone patted his feet under the duvet and rose from the end of the bed.

  ‘I’ll get your pills, dear.’

  She left the room. Hamish turned to me, his whole body shaking now, the puzzle on the tray starting to break up as the tray bounced up and down beneath it. ‘Jealous,’ Hamish croaked through clenched teeth. ‘Jealous, Prentice; jealous! Jealous! Jealous God! Jealous!’

  I got up slowly, patted his trembling hands and smiled.

  I’ve always had this fantasy that, after Uncle Rory borrowed his flat-mate Andy’s motorbike and headed off into the sunset, he crashed somewhere, maybe coming down to Gallanach; came off the road and fell down some gully nobody’s looked in for the last ten years, or - rather more likely, I suppose - crashed into the water, and there’s a Suzuki 185 GT lying just under the waves of Loch Lomond, or Loch Long, or Loch Fyne, its rider somehow entangled in it, reduced by now to a skeleton in borrowed leathers, somewhere underwater, perhaps between here and Glasgow; and we all pass it every time we make the journey, maybe only a few tens of metres away from him, and very possibly will never know.

  I know that dad - who had indeed assumed that Rory had been on his way here - drove the Glasgow road a few times, immediately after Andy and then Janice raised the alarm, looking for some sign of an accident, a skid mark, a damaged fence or wall, always wondering if maybe his brother was lying unconscious or paralysed in a field or a ditch somewhere, invisible from the road ... But all he ever found were road cones, assorted litter and the occasional dead sheep or deer.

  Whatever; neither dad nor the police ever found any trace of Rory or the bike. No unidentified bodies turned up that could have been his, and no hospitals received any unknown coma victims fitting his description.

  I don’t think any of us ever mentioned suicide, but I at least considered the possibility that he had killed himself. Rory had been depressed, after all; his one success had been a travel book written a decade earlier, and everything else he’d tried since had failed to live up to that; he had recently failed to become a TV presenter - a job he’d thought beneath him but which he needed for the money (and so had been all the more galled when he hadn’t been chosen) - and maybe, too, he’d finally admitted to himself he was never going to write his magnum opus ...

  Hell, his life just wasn’t going anywhere special; people kill themselves for poorer reasons.

  I reckoned the chances of him being under the waves somewhere improved significantly if he had committed suicide; he could have picked his spot to drive straight at a wall or a crash barrier, maybe on top of a cliff. Could be anywhere. I could think of a few places, further north in the Highlands, which would be perfect. If he’d tied himself to the bike somehow ...

  But why go to the effort of doing that in the first place? It wasn’t as though there was some big insurance sum involved, or any funny business with wills or family money. Rory had inherited some capital when grandad died, held in trust until he was eighteen; he’d used that up travelling round India the first time, then lived off the success of Traps and - later - the declining advances and journalistic commissions he’d received after that. When he’d disappeared he’d had a small overdraft.

  Maybe he’d been murdered. I’d thought of that years ago, even on the evening we’d heard he was missing. I had been playing down on the shore of Loch Gair with Helen and Diana Urvill, and when we came back for our tea there was a police car in the courtyard of the house.

  A police car! I recall thinking, getting all excited.

  Of course, in my fantasy I was the one who discovered Rory’s evil murderer and brought him to justice, or fought with him and watched him fall off a cliff or into a combine harvester or under a steam-roller or whatever.

  Only I couldn’t see that anybody had had much of a motive. It had crossed my mind that it might have something to do with Crow Road; somebody wanted to steal the idea and keep Rory out of the way, but it wasn’t even as though there was much to steal. Notes and poems; wow.

  I stood up on the silent concrete block and dusted my hands off. The disappearing clouds were the colour of dried blood in a sky gone close to purple. More stars were coming out. A contrail blazed pink overhead, as a plane headed for America. I looked at my watch; I had to go. I’d told mum I’d be back for supper in an hour or so. We were expecting Lewis and Verity that evening; they were flying up from London, where Lewis had been working, and they would hire a car at Glasgow. They might be back when I returned.

  ‘Shouldn’t have mentioned you,’ Uncle Hamish said, as I walked to the door of the dim bedroom. I turned back. He was still trembling. It hurt me to look at him, the way it hurts to hear nails scraped down a blackboard. ‘Shouldn’t have said anything about you, Prentice,’ he said, the words whistling out between his clenched
teeth. I could hear Aunt Tone’s footsteps coming up the stairs in the hall outside. ‘Shouldn’t have said, Prentice; shouldn’t have said.’

  ‘Said what, uncle?’ I said, hand on the door knob.

  ‘That you were closer to me; that I’d won you, saved you from his heathen faith!’ Uncle Hamish’s eyes stared at me from a shaking, ash-grey face.

  I nodded and smiled at him. ‘Oh well,’ I said. The door opened and I got out of the way of Aunt Tone, bearing pills and a glass of water. ‘See you tomorrow, Prentice,’ she whispered to me. She patted my arm. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘It’s all right. See you tomorrow, Aunt Tone.’

  Outside, on the landing, I looked down the stairs to where my mother was standing by the front door, putting on her jacket. I leant back against the closed bedroom door for just a second, and - looking at nothing in particular - said very quietly to myself, ‘See?’

  I went to the land-side edge of the concrete cube, and faced back at the remains of the sunset, trying to work out how I was going to feel seeing Lewis and Verity again, after the way I’d behaved at New Year. But search as I tried, I could find no trace of dread or jealousy; I was even looking forward to seeing them again. Something of the coldness that had settled over me in the last few days seemed to have spread to the way I felt about Verity. It felt like all my jealous passion had dissipated like the clouds overhead.