Iain Banks - The Crow Road

I leapt up, ninja'd over to Gav's bed and wheeched the duvet off.

"Aw ya —!" He grabbed the duvet back, cocooned himself again. " — bastard!"

"Gavin," I told him. "You are a skid-mark on the lavatory bowl of life. But I respect you for it." I turned, grabbed my dressing gown and made for the door; with one mighty ninja kick, the side of my right foot connected with all three switches of the fan heater at the same time and it hummed into life. "I shall make some tea."

"Dunno about tea; fuckin good at makin a noise."

"Thank you for sharing that with us, Gav. I shall return."

"What's the weather like?"

"Hmm," I said, staring at the ceiling, one finger to my lips. "Good question," I said. "The weather's like, a manifestation of the energy-transfer effected between volumes of the planet's gaseous envelope due to differential warming of the atmosphere at various latitudes by solar radiation. Surprised you didn't know that, actually, Gavin."

Gavin stuck his head out from under the duvet, giving me cause once more to marvel at the impressive way the lad's shoulders merged into his head with no apparent narrowing in between (this appeared to be the principal physical benefit bestowed by the game of rugby; the acquisition of an extremely thick neck, just as the most important thing one could take to the sport was a thick skull, and from it an intact one still in satisfactory two-way communication with one's spinal cord).

Gav — who probably epitomised thick-skulledness, though admittedly would not be amongst one's first fifteen when it came to offering proof of heavy traffic within the central nervous system — opened one bleary eye and focused on me with the same accuracy one has grown to expect from security forces aiming baton rounds at protesters" legs. "What the fuck's made you so unbearable this morning?"

I clasped my hands, smiled broadly. "Gavin, I am in a transport of delight, or at least shall be shortly after one o'clock this afternoon."

There was a pause while Gavin's duty-neuron struggled to assimilate this information.

The intense processing involved obviously exhausted too much of Gav's thinly-stretched grey matter to allow speech in the near future, so he contented himself with a grunt and submerged again. I boogied to the kitchen, singing, "Walking On Sunshine'.

I watched the orange-white needles swing across their calibrated arcs. Ninety. Jeez. I was sitting behind Lewis, who was in the front passenger seat. I kind of wished I'd sat behind Verity; I wouldn't have seen so much of her — not even a hint of that slim, smooth face, frowning in concentration as she barrelled the big black Beemer towards the next corner — but I wouldn't have been able to see the speedometer, either. Lewis seemed unperturbed.

I shifted in my seat, a little uncomfortable. I pulled the seat belt tight again. I checked Verity wasn't watching and adjusted my jeans a little. The folder containing Rory's work lay on the seat by my side; I lifted the file onto my lap, concealing a bulge. There was a reason for this.

We'd been on the bit of fast dual carriageway between Dumbarton and Alexandria, not long after Verity and Lewis had picked me up. Verity made a sort of wriggling motion a couple of times, straining back against her seat. This force was applied by those long, black-nyloned legs, and though most of the pressure was provided by her left limb, some residual effort pushed her right foot down as well, and on each occasion we speeded up, just momentarily, as her amply-soled Doc Marten pressed against the accelerator.

"You okay?" Lewis had asked, sounding amused.

She'd made a funny face. "Yup," she'd said, shifting down to fourth as a car she'd been waiting to pass pulled back into the slow lane. We were all pressed back into our seats. "Problem of wearing sussies, sometimes; they sort of pull a bit, you know?" She flashed a smile at Lewis, then me, then looked forward again.

Lewis laughed, "Well, no, can't claim I do know, but I'll take your word for it."

Verity nodded. "Just getting things sorted out here." She strained against the back-rest again, her bum lifting right off the seat. The car, already doing eight-five, roared up to over a hundred. The rear of a truck was approaching rapidly. Verity wiggled her bottom, plonked it back down, calmly braked and shifted up to fifth, dawdling along behind the green Parceline truck while she waited for it to overtake an Esso tanker. "Parceline, parceline… she breathed, tapping her fingers on the thick steering wheel. She made it sound French, pronouncing the word so that it rhymed with "Vaseline'.

"That better?" Lewis inquired.

"Mm-hum," Verity nodded.

Meanwhile I was fainting in the back seat, just thinking of what that tight black mid-thigh skirt concealed.

It had taken until the long, open left-hander that leads down into Glen Kinglas before my erection had finally subsided, and that had been mostly naked fear; Verity had lost it just for a second, the rear of the car nudging out towards the wrong side of the road as we whanged round the bend. Sitting in the rear, maybe it had felt worse, but I'd been petrified. Thankfully, there'd been no traffic coming; the concept of striking up an intimate — indeed potentially penetrative — relationship with the rocks on the far side of the road had been bad enough; but even the prospect of a head-on with another lump of metal travelling at anything remotely like the sort of speed we were sustaining might have resulted in me making my mark in the most embarrassing fashion on the leather upholstery of the Bavarian macht-wagen.

Verity just went "Whoa-yeah!" like she'd accomplished something, jiggled the steering wheel once and accelerated cleanly away.

Anyway, it's one of the minor unfortunate facts of life that a detumescing willy is prone to trap stray pube hairs under the foreskin as it scrolls forward again, and that was why I was adjusting my clothing as we braked for the bend above Cairndow.

I opened the Crow Road folder lying on my lap and leafed through some of the papers. I'd read the various bits and pieces a couple of times now, looking for something deep and mysterious in it all but not finding anything; I'd even done a little research of my own, and discovered through mum that dad had some more of Rory's papers in his study; she'd promised she'd try and look them out for me. I took a sheet of paper out of the folder and held the page of scribbled, multi-coloured notes up, resting it on one raised knee, gazing at it with a critical look, wondering if Verity could see what I was doing. I cleared my throat. I'd rather been hoping Lewis or Verity might have asked me what the file contained by now, and what I was doing, but — annoyingly — neither of them had.

"Sounds?" Lewis asked.

"Sounds." Verity nodded.

I sighed. I put the sheet back in the folder and the folder back on the other rear seat.

We rounded the top of Upper Loch Fyne listening to an old Madonna tape, the Material Girl singing "Papa Don't Preach," which raised a smile from me, at least.

… Back to Gallanach, for Christmas and Hogmanay. I felt a strange mixture of hope and melancholy. The lights of on-coming cars glared in the dull day. I watched the lights and the drizzle and the grey, pervasive clouds, remembering another car journey, the year before.

"Sounds daft to me, Prentice," Ashley said, lighting another cigarette.

"It sounds daft to me," I agreed. I watched the red tip of her cigarette glow; white headlights streamed by on the other side of the motorway, as we headed north in the darkness.

Darren had been dead a couple of months; I had fallen out with my father and I'd been in London for most of the summer, staying with Aunt Ilsa and her long-term companion, whose only name appeared to be Mr Gibbon, which I thought made him sound like a cat for some reason… Anyway, I'd been staying with them in darkest Kensington, at Mr Gibbon's very grand, three-storeyed town-house in Ascot Square, just off Addison Road, and working at a branch of Mondo-Food on Victoria Street (they were trying a new line in Haggisburgers at the time and the manager thought my accent would help shift them. Only trouble was, when people said, "Gee, what's in these?" I kept telling them. I don't believe they're on the menu any more). I'd saved some money, grown heartily sick of London, fast food and maybe people, too, and I was getting out.