Iain Banks - The Crow Road

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 Mobius 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 porportions 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 passanda, 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 candlelight 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 shoplifting, 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.