Iain Banks - The Crow Road

I put my head on my hand and looked at my uncle as I considered this idea of God as child-abuser. Hamish started to shake his head again before he'd sipped his whisky, and I experienced a brief feeling of excited horror, waiting for the resulting catastrophe; but he just stopped in mid-shake, sipped, then shook his head slowly again. "Aye; a strict father."

I patted his arm. "Never mind." I said, helpfully.

I danced with Aunt Charlotte, Verity's still-handsome and determinedly superstitious mother, who told me that the newly-weds would surely be happy, because their stars were well-matched.

Exhibiting a generosity of spirit I rather surprised myself with, I agreed that certainly the stars in their eyes seemed to augur well.

I bumped into the smaller than life-size Mr Gibbon near the bar at one point; I was in such a gregarious, clubbable mood I actually enjoyed talking to him. We agreed Aunt Ilsa was a wonderful woman, but that she had itchy feet. Mr Gibbon looked over at Aunt Ilsa, who had — I could only imagine by force — got Uncle Hamish up for a dance. Together they were having the same effect on the dance floor as a loose cannon manned by hippos.

"Yes," Mr Gibbon said, sighing, his eyelids fluttering. "I am her kentledge." He smiled at me with a sort of apologetic self-satisfaction, as though he was the luckiest man alive, and tip-toed off through the crowds with his two glasses of sherry.

"Kentledge?" I said to myself. I'd have scratched my head but my hands were full of glasses.

"Prentice. Taking a breather too, eh?"

I had stepped outside the marquee for a breather, late on, after the hoochter-choochter music started and the place got even warmer. I looked round in the shadows and saw Fergus Urvill, Scottishly resplendent in his Urvill dress tartan. Fergus came into the light spilling from the open flap of the marquee. He was smoking a cigar. The rain had ceased at last and the garden smelled of earth and wet leaves.

Fergus glittered; crystal buttons sparkled on his jacket; black pearls of obsidian decorated his sporran, and the skean dhu stuck into the top of his right sock — a rather more impressive and business-like example of the traditional Highland-dress knife than mine, which looked like a glorified letter opener — was crowned with a large ruby, glinting in the light against the hairs of his leg like some grotesquely faceted bulb of blood.

"Yes," I said. "Yes, getting my breath back."

Fergus looked into the marquee. "They're a handsome couple, eh?"

I glanced in, to see Lewis and Verity, hand in hand, talking to some of Verity's relations. Lewis had changed into a dark suit and a bootlace tie; Verity wore a dark skirt and long, gold-coloured jacket.

I nodded. "Yes," I said. I cleared my throat.

"Cigar?" Fergus said, digging an aluminium tube from one pocket of his jacket. I shook my head. "No," Fergus said, looking at me tolerantly. "Of course you don't, do you."

"No," I said. I grinned inanely.

I was surprised at just how uncomfortable I felt in his presence, and how hard it was both to work out precisely why I felt that way, and to disguise the fact. We talked for a little while. About my studies; going better now, thank you. And about flying. Fergus was learning to fly; up at Connel, the air field a few miles north of Oban. Oh, really? Yes. Hoped to be going solo by the end of the year, if all went according to plan. He asked me what I thought of the Gulf crisis and I, quailing, said it all kind of depended how you looked at it.

I think I made him feel as awkward eventually as I had from the start of the conversation, and I took the opportunity of a new reel beginning to head back into the marquee, to join in another swirling, riotous dance.

Ashley, Dean and I retired to my room in the house during the supper interval, while people got their breath back and the band — four oldish guys mysteriously called the Dougie McTee Trio — tried to get drunk.

We snorted some coke, we had a couple of Js, and in response to a single question from Dean, I told them both all about the River Game; its history, every rule and feature, a thorough description of the board, an analysis of the differing playing styles of myself, Lewis, James, dad, mum and Helen Urvill, some handy tips and useful warnings, and a few interesting excerpts from certain classic games we'd played. It took about ten minutes. I don't think I repeated myself once or left anything out, and I finished by saying that all of that, of course, wasn't to mention the secret, banned version; the Black River Game.

They both stared at me. Dean looked like he hadn't believed a word I'd said. Ashley just seemed amused.

"Aye. Good coke, isn't it?" she said.

"Yep," Dean said, busy with mirror and blade again. He glanced at his sister and nodded at me. "For God's sake, Ash, stick that number in his mouth and shut him up."

I accepted the J with a smile.

The three of us kick-stepped down the stairs.

"Hoy, all that stuff about that game," Dean shouted as we three swung into the marquee, where an Eightsome Reel of extravagant proportions and high decibel-count was in its Dervish phase. "That gospel, aye?"

I frowned deeply as I looked at him. "Oh no." I shook my head earnestly. "It's true."

Later, I sat alone at a table, quietly drinking whisky, watching them all. I'd lowered my head; one hand lay flat, palm-down, on the table. I felt very calm and deadly and in control; shit, I felt like I was Michael Corleone. The tunes and laughs and shouts washed through me, and the people, for that moment, seemed to be dancing about me, for me. I felt… pivotal, and drank a silent toast to Grandma Margot. I drank to my late father. I thought of Uncle Rory, wherever he was, and drank to him. I even drank to James, also absent.

James was coming down only slowly from his peak of anger. Even now, he was still so sullen and difficult to get on with that it had almost been a relief when he'd said he didn't want to be involved in the wedding. He'd gone to stay with some school pals at Kilmartin, a little north of Gallanach, for the weekend. I think mum was unhappy he wasn't here today, but Lewis and I weren't.

I drank some more whisky, thinking.

A marriage.

And a little information.

Not to mention more than a little suspicion.

All it had taken was one blurred face, glimpsed far away by somebody else, seen soundless for a second on a fuzzed TV in a noisy, crowded, smoky pub in Soho, one Friday evening — just one tiny example of all the inevitable, peripheral results of a confrontation in a distant desert — and suddenly, despite all our efforts, we I'd felt a sort of shocked calm settle over me as I'd travelled, and been able to forget about death and its consequences for a while.

The familiar route had looked new and startling that day. The train had travelled from Lochgair north along the lower loch, crossed the narrows at Minard, and stopped at Garbhallt, Strachur, Lochgoilhead and Portincaple Junction, where it joined the West Highland line and took the north shore of the Clyde towards Glasgow. The waters and the skies blazed blue, the fields and forests waved luxuriously in a soft, flower-scented breeze and the high hill summits shimmered purple and brown in the distance.

My spirits had been raised just watching the summer countryside go past — even the sight of the burgeoning obscenity of the new Trident submarine base at Faslane hadn't depressed me — and when the train had approached Queen Street (and I'd been making very sure I had all my luggage with me) I'd seen something sublime, even magical.

It had been no more than that same scrubby, irregularly rectangular field of coarse grass I'd sat looking at so glumly from the delayed train in the rain that January. Then, the field's sodden, down-trodden paths had provided an image of desolation I had fastened onto, in my self-pity, like a blood-starved leech onto bruised flesh.