Iain Banks: The Crow Road

"Well, I think mum and dad would rather he was, but I'm not bothered one way or the other. Lewis isn't too keen, are you my love?"

Lewis showed his teeth. "Over my dead body, actually." he said.

"See?" Verity said to Diana, who was smiling broadly and holding the boy close, sniffing him. She just nodded.

Verity glanced at Lewis, then said, "Prentice?"

"Yo?"

"We'd like you to be his godfather. Would you be?" She actually looked as though she thought I might refuse. Lewis was grinning at me.

I cleared my throat. "Well… in terms of the actual title, I'm sort of taking a long hard look at my previous statements about the existence or non-existence of a supreme being at this moment in time, re-appraisal-wise," I said, a suitably pained expression on my face as Diana handed the baby to me.

Lewis laughed.

Anyway, it was agreed, and then we thought the little blighter ought to have at least a semblance of a christening, so Lewis dabbed his finger in his whisky and reached over and put a tiny drop of the spirit on his son's head, and said, "There; that's all he's going to get."

"Kenneth Walker McHoan," I said, cradling him with one arm and raising my glass in the other hand.

We drank the lad's health. Then Diana threw her glass away over the battlements towards the woods. Lewis, Verity and I all looked at each other, then followed suit, and heard a couple of the tumblers smash somewhere in the trees beneath. Young Kenneth opened his eyes at that point, looked woozily up at me and let out a small, plaintive cry. I laughed and kissed his tiny nose, then handed him back to his mother so she could feed him.

I stood up then and went to the battlements, and held the ancient rough stones beneath my hands. I looked out over the woods and the plain and the fields; to Gallanach, with its quays and spires and serried streets, and out to the crumpled hills beyond, the brindle of forests to the east and the glitter of waves to the west, where the ocean was. I thought of Ashley, on the other side of that ocean, and wondered what she was doing right now, and hoped that she was well, and happy, and maybe thinking of me, and then I just stood there, grinning like a fool, and took a deep, deep breath of that sharp, smoke-scented air and raised my arms to the open sky, and said, "Ha!"