Iain Banks - The Crow Road

Lewis sagged. He might have fallen if Verity hadn't held him. He slapped both hands over his face. "You unutterable… minx!" he roared, and put a hand to each side of Verity's grinning face, holding her head and shaking it. She just giggled.

So we sat and had some coffee and sandwiches.

"Damn fine coffee," muttered Lewis.

Well, he had a tartan shirt on.

We drove back later; I watched buzzards and crows and gulls stoop and wheel and glide across the under-surface of thickening grey cloud. We were all very tired save Verity, and I must have fallen asleep because it came as a surprise when we had to stop to put the top up, in Inveraray, when the rain came on. It was a cramped, claustrophobic journey after that, and the dog whined a lot and smelled.

We got to Lochgair; I staggered into the house, collapsed into my bed and slept for the rest of the day.

I kept missing Ashley after that. Whenever I rang the Watt house she was out, or asleep. She rang me once, but I'd been out walking. Next time I called she had caught the train for Glasgow, en route for the airport and London.

Tone and Hamish's usual post-Hogmanay soirée had been even more subdued than usual. Hamish had given up drink, but apparently found his heretical ideas on retribution more difficult to jettison, and so spent most of the evening telling me — with a kind of baleful enthusiasm — about a Commentary he was writing on the Bible, which cast new light on punishment and reward in the hereafter, and which had great contemporary relevance.

I drove back to Glasgow on the fifth of January. After New Year's Eve, watching Fergus show off his new plane, I hadn't visited the castle again.

Two weeks later, after I had had my abbreviated conversation with Lachlan Watt in sunny Sydney, I set off for Lochgair at nine that Friday morning, listening to the war on the radio for as long as I could, until the mountains blocked out the signal.

War breaks out amongst the oilfields and the price of crude plummets. From being an ally so staunch he can missile American ships and it passes as an understandable mistake, and gas thousands of Kurds with barely a gesture of censure (Thatcher promptly increased his export credits, and within three weeks Britain was talking about all the lovely marketing opportunities Iraq represented; for chemicals, presumably), Saddam Hussein had suddenly become Adolf Hitler, despite more or less being invited to walk into Kuwait.

It was a war scripted by Heller from a story by Orwell, and somebody would be bombing their own airfield before too long, no doubt.

From Glasgow to Lochgair is a hundred and thirty-five kilometres by road; less as the crow flies, or as the missile cruises. The journey took about an hour and a half, which is about normal when the roads aren't packed with tourists and caravans. I spent most of the time shaking my head in disbelief at the news on the radio, and telling myself that I mustn't allow this to distract me from confronting Fergus, or at the very least sharing my suspicions with somebody other than Ash.

But I think I already knew that was exactly what would happen.

And Ash… God, the damn thing may be just muscle, merely a pump, but my heart really did seem to ache whenever I thought of her.

So I tried not to think about Ashley Watt at all, utterly unsure whether by doing so I was being very strong, or extremely stupid. I chose not to make an informed guess which; my track record didn't encourage such honesty.

Mum dropped her laser-guided bombshell over lunch that day. We were sitting in the kitchen, watching the war on television, dutifully listening to the same reports and watching the same sparse bits of footage time after time. I was already starting to get bored with the twin blue-pink glowing cones of RAF Tornadoes" afterburners as they took off into the night, and even the slo-mo footage of the exciting Brit-made JP-233 runway-cratering package scattering bomblets and mines with the demented glee of some Satanic Santa was already inducing feelings of weary familiarity.

On the other hand, such repetition left one free to appreciate the subtler points in these reports that might otherwise have gone unnoticed, such as the fact that the English could pronounce the soft ch sound, after all. The little rascals had only been teasing us all these years, saying «Lock» Lomond and «Lock» Ness! Why, it must be something genetic, we'd all thought. But no! Places like Bah'rain and Dah'ran were rolled confidently off the tongue by newsreader after newsreader and correspondent after correspondent as though they'd been using the technique for years.

Unfortunately, rather like a super-gun, there appeared to be a problem traversing such a sophisticated phonetic delivery system, and while the Arabian peninsula obviously lay in the favoured direction, nowhere unfortunate enough to be located to the north of London seemed able to benefit from this new-found facility.

"Oh," mum said, passing the milk across the kitchen table to me, "assuming we're all still alive next Friday, Fergus has asked me to the opera in Glasgow. Is it all right if we stay with you?"

I watched the lines of tracer climb above Baghdad, impotent spirals of light twisting to and fro. I felt frozen. Had I heard right? I looked at my mother.

She frowned. "Prentice, are you okay?"

"Wha —?" I said. I could feel the blood draining from my face. I put the jug down, feeling as white as the low-fat it contained. I tried to swallow. I couldn't talk, so I settled for clearing my throat and looking at mum with a interrogatory expression.

"Fergus," mum said tolerantly. "Invited me to the opera in Glasgow, next Friday. May we stay with you? I assume there's room… I do mean separate rooms, Prentice." She smiled. "Are you all right? You're not worried about the war, are you? You look white as a sheet."

"I'm fine," I waved one hand weakly. Actually I felt sick.

"You look sick," mum said.

I tried to swallow again. She shook her head. "Don't worry, Prentice. They won't conscript you; you're far too Bolshie. I really wouldn't worry."

"Hg," I said, almost gagging.

"Is that all right? Are we allowed to stay with you? Does your lease, or whatever, cover that?"

"Ah," I said at last. "Yeah." I nodded, finally swallowing successfully. "Yeah, I think so. I mean, of course. Yes. Why not? Loads of room. What opera? What are you going to see?"

"Macbeth."

Macbeth! "Oh," I said, trying to smile. "That's Verdi, isn't it?"

"Yes, I think so," mum said, still frowning. "Would you like to come? It's a box, so there should be room."

"Um, no thanks," I said. I didn't know what to do with my hands, which seemed to want to shake. Finally I shoved them in the pockets of my jeans.

"You sure you're all right, Prentice?"

"Of course!"

Mum tipped her head to one side. "You're not upset because I'm going out with Fergus, are you?"

"No!" I laughed. "Why, are you?"

"We've partnered each other at bridge a couple of times. He's a friend, Prentice, that's all." Mum looked puzzled.

"Right. Well," I said. "Yes, of course there's room. I'll… no problem."

"Good," mum said, and clicked a couple of sweeteners into her tea. She was still looking at me strangely. I turned and watched the war for a while. Jumping Jesus, now what?

I sat at dad's desk. It took longer to write down what I suspected than I'd thought it would. I started with pen and paper, but my writing looked funny and I kept having to dry my hand. Finally I used the computer and printed out what I'd typed. I put the sheet of paper in an envelope and left it lying in the top right drawer of the desk. I wished dad had had a gun, but he hadn't. I settled for the old Bowie knife I'd had since my Scouting days, sticking the leather sheath down the back of my jeans. I changed into a T-shirt and a shortish jumper so that 1 could get at the knife quickly, feeling frightened and embarrassed as I did so.