Iain Banks - The Crow Road

They'd never met before. How shocking, I thought. Where was that traditional British reserve only abandoned for cloying camaraderie under the influence of injuriously vast quantities of alcohol? I wondered, if nervously.

Ash was looking over Janice Rae's shoulder at me, those grey eyes behind the bright red glasses filling with tears.

"Um; you've to phone home," Gav mumbled, apparently addressing his trainers.

"ET or BT?" I heard myself say to him, though the different sections of my brain seemed to have slipped out of synch somehow, and I was aware of all sorts of different things at once, and time seemed to have slowed down and at the same time some part of my brain was racing, trying to come up with some logical explanation for what was going on that didn't involve calamity… and failing.

"It's — " Gav said, this time seemingly directing his remarks to his rugby-shirted chest. "It's your dad," he whispered, and suddenly started to cry.

"This is the Specialist Glass Division," Hamish said, opening a door. They found themselves in a long corridor with one glass wall that looked out into a bright, modern, open-plan and spacious area. Everything gleamed and the few people visible wore white coats; apart from the exposed brickwork of a couple of rotund furnaces, linked to the ceiling by shining metal ductwork, the place looked more like a laboratory than a factory.

There was a silence none of the three brothers seemed inclined to fill. Hamish, an immaculate white coat over his three piece suit, gazed with a rapt expression at the almost static panorama on the far side of the glass. Kenneth looked bored. Rory stood at Janice Rae's side, humming something monotonous, one arm round Janice's waist and attempting to tickle her, just above her right hip. "Very clean," Janice said eventually.

"Yes," Hamish said gravely. He nodded slowly, still observing the scene beyond the glass. "It has to be, of course." He turned to the tables against the wall behind them, on which lay various glassy-looking objects, some in display cabinets, most loose, all with explanatory notes stuck to the wall above them. From a wooden plinth on one table, Hamish picked up a dull black cone that looked a little like a Viking helmet without the horns.

"This is a missile nose-cone," he said, turning the cone over in his hands. He held it out to Janice. She took it.

"Hmm. Quite heavy," she said. Rory tickled her again and she nudged him.

"Yes, heavy," Hamish said gravely, taking it back and carefully replacing it on its wooden block. "Strictly speaking, this is a glass ceramic rather than ordinary glass," he said, adjusting the precise position of the nose cone on the plinth. "The basis is lithium aluminosilicate, which withstands heat very well. Cooker hobs are made from this sort of thing… and obviously missiles need to withstand a lot of heat from friction with the air."

"Obviously," Kenneth said. He and Rory exchanged looks.

Hamish turned to another exhibit; a broad bowl, also dull and dark, and over half a metre across, it was like a gigantic plate with no lip. He lifted an edge so that they could look underneath, where it was criss-crossed with a lattice of deep ribs.

"Satellite aerial?" Kenneth said.

"No," Hamish said, though a hint of a smile crossed his dour face. "No, this is a substrate for an astronomical telescope mirror."

"Like the one Fergus has in the castle?" Rory asked.

That's right. All the substrates and optics for Mr Urvill's telescope were made here. Though of course they were on a smaller scale than this piece." Hamish lowered the edge of the bowl and flicked a bit of dust off one edge. "This is made from the same type of material as the nose cone there. It resists distortion under thermal shock."

"Hmm," Janice in a tone that suggested that she was really trying to be interested as well as sound it.

"Over here," Hamish said, plodding towards another table, "we have what are called the passivation glasses, related to the Borate glasses but made from zinc-silicoborate…»

"All I said was I'd like to see the factory," Janice whispered to Rory as they moved to follow Hamish. "The outside would have done."

"Tough shit," Rory said, and tickled her with both hands this time, producing a yelp.

Another man in a white coat came up to Hamish from the far end of the corridor. "Excuse me a moment," Hamish said to the others, and turned to talk to him.

Kenneth turned to Rory and Janice. He tugged on Rory's sleeve and in a low monotone said, "Dad, I'm bored, dad; dad, are we nearly finished yet, dad? Dad, want to go home, dad." He leant one hand against the glass wall, glanced back at Hamish — still deep in conversation, and nodding — and rolled his eyes. He looked at Janice. "My elder brother," he said quietly. The man who put the Bore in Boro-silicate."

"You don't have to stay." Rory grinned. "We could get a train home."

Kenneth shook his head. "No; it's okay." He glanced at his watch. "Maybe we can drag the Tree out for lunch soon."

"Sorry about that," Hamish said, coming up behind them. They all smiled at him. Hamish moved one arm up to indicate they should move down the corridor to where they could see the exciting zinc-silicoborates. He took a pristine white handkerchief out of his pocket and rubbed at the faint hand-print Kenneth had left on the glass partition as he said, "These passivation glasses are of much use in the semi-conductor industry, and we have high hopes that with the burgeoning of the Scottish computer industry — Silicon Glen as it is sometimes jocularly called — we shall shortly be supplying…»

"And to think, all that could have been mine." Kenneth sighed with pretended regret, putting his feet up on the low wall of the terrace and rocking his seat back on its rear legs as he shaded his eyes with one hand. He brought his drink up to his lips with the other.

Janice and Rory were tucking into their salads; the terrace of the Achnaba Hotel was crowded with tourists, and on the road in front of the hotel cars, caravans and coaches hummed past, heading for Lochgilphead, Gallanach, or Kintyre. A brisk warm wind blew from the south west, laden with the vanilla smell of gorse blossom, mixed with pine off the forests and a salt hint from the sea.

"Well, that's just the way it goes, Ken," Rory said. "Hamish got to be manager of the factory and you didn't. No use crying over spilled boro-silicate…»

Kenneth grinned, staring out over the balustrade of the terrace towards the hills on the far side of Loch Fyne. "I wonder where that saying comes from. I mean, why milk? If it means something not very valuable, why not water? Or —»

"Maybe crying over milk was unlucky," Rory suggested.

"It was years before I realised it was even common parlance," Kenneth said, still staring out to the loch. "I used to think it was something only mum came out with. Like 'I couldn't draw a herring off a plate. I mean, what the hell does that mean? Or, 'Och aye; that's him away the Crow Road. Jeez. Opaque or what?"

"But they might all have some… some basis in reality," Rory insisted. "Like crying over milk was bad news; spoiled it."

"Maybe it spoiled un-spilled milk," Kenneth nodded. "Some chemical reaction. Like they say thunder can curdle milk; ions or something."

"Ah," Rory said. "Then maybe you were supposed to cry over milk, because it helped preserve it, or made it easier to turn into cheese. And so it was a waste crying over spilled milk."

"I think this is where we came in," Kenneth said. He squinted at a car on the road as it hurried north. "Isn't that Fergus?" he said, nodding. "Where?"

"Racing green Jag; heading north."

"Is that what Ferg's driving these days?" Rory said, rising up in his seat a little to watch the car pass. It swept round the long bend that carried the road towards the forest. He sat back down and took up his fork again. "Yeah, looked like Ferg."