The Crow Road

by Iain Banks

  "Who knows?" My gran sighed. "Might be dead, for all we know."

  I shook my head. "No, I don't think so."

  "You sound certain, Prentice. What do you know we don't?"

  "I just feel it." I shrugged, threw a handful of pebbles into the waves. "He'll be back."

  "Your father thinks he will," Margot agreed, sounding thoughtful. "He always talks about him as though he's still around."

  "He'll be back," I nodded, and lay back in the grass, hands under my head.

  "I don't know, though," Grandma Margot said. "I think he might be dead."

  "Dead? Why?" The sky was deep, shining blue.

  "You wouldn't believe me."

  "What?" I sat up again, swivelled to face her, looking over the much-scribbled-upon grey-white cast (as well as signatures, get-well-soon messages and silly drawings, there were at least two shopping lists, a recipe copied down from the radio and detailed instructions on how to get by car to the flat I shared in Glasgow).

  Grandma Margot pulled up her sleeve to expose her white, darkly spotted right forearm. "I have my moles, Prentice. They tell me things."

  I laughed. She looked inscrutable. "Sorry, gran?"

  She tapped her wrist with one long pale finger; there was a large brown mole there. Her eyes were narrowed. She leaned closer still and tapped the mole again. "Not a sausage, Prentice."

  "Well," I said, not sure whether to try another laugh. "No."

  "Not for eight years, not a hint, not a sensation." Her voice was low, almost husky. She looked as though she was enjoying herself.

  "I give in, gran; what are you talking about?"

  "My moles, Prentice." She arched one eyebrow, then sat back with a sigh in her wheelchair. "I can tell what's going on in this family by my moles. They itch when people are talking about me, or when something… remarkable is happening to the person." She frowned. "Well, usually." She glared at me, prodded me in the shoulder with her stick. "Don't tell your father about this; he'd have me committed."

  "Gran! Of course not! And he wouldn't, anyway!"

  "I wouldn't be too sure of that." Her eyes narrowed again.

  I leant on one of the chair's wheels. "Let me get this right; your moles itch when one of us is talking about you?"

  She nodded, grim. "Sometimes they hurt, sometimes they tickle. And they can itch in different ways, too."

  "And that mole's Uncle Rory's?" I nodded incredulously at the big mole on her right wrist.

  That's right," she said, tapping the stick on one footrest of the wheelchair. She held up her wrist and fixed the raised brown spot with an accusatory glare. "Not a sausage, for eight years."

  I stared at the dormant eruption with a sort of nervous respect, mingled with outright disbelief. "Wow," I said at last.

  * * *

  "… survived, of course, by her son Kenneth, by Hamish, and by, ah, Roderick." The good lawyer Blawke had helpfully nodded at my dad and my uncle when he mentioned them. Dad kept on grinding his teeth; Uncle Hamish stopped snoring and gave a little start at the mention of his name; he opened his eyes and looked round — a little wildly, I thought — before relaxing once more. His eyelids started to droop again almost immediately. At the mention of Uncle Rory's name Mr Blawke looked about the crowded chapel as though expecting Uncle Rory to make a sudden and dramatic appearance. "And, sharing, I'm sure, in the family's grief, the husband of her late only daughter, Fiona." Here Mr Blawke looked very serious, and did indeed grasp his lapels for a moment, as he nodded, gravely, at Uncle Fergus. "Mr Urvill," Mr Blawke said, completing the nod that had developed pretensions to a bow, I thought, and then clearing his throat. This genuflection completed, the reference to past tragedy duly made, most of the people who had turned to look at Uncle Fergus turned away again.

  My head stayed turned.

  Uncle Fergus is an interesting enough fellow in himself, and (of course) as Mr Blawke knew to his benefit, probably Gallanach's richest and certainly its most powerful man. But i wasn't looking at him.

  Beside the thick-necked bulk of the Urvill of Urvill (soberly resplendent in what I assumed was the family's mourning tartan — blackish purple, blackish green and fairly dark black) sat neither of his two daughters, Diana and Helen — those long-legged visions of money-creamed, honey-skinned, globetrotting loveliness — but instead his niece, the stunning, the fabulous, the golden-haired, vellus-faced, diamond-eyed Verity, upwardly nubile scionette of the house of Urvill, the jewel beside the jowls; the girl who, for me, had put the lectual in intellectual, and phany in epiphany and the ibid in libidinous!

  Such bliss to look. I feasted my eyes on that gracefully angular form, just this side of her uncle and sitting quietly in black. She had worn a white quilted skiing jacket outside, but now had taken it off in the unfittingly chilly crematorium, and sat in a black blouse and black skirt, black… tights? Stockings? My God, the sheer force of joy in just imagining! and black shoes. And shivering! The slick material of the blouse trembling in the light from the translucent panes overhead, black silk hanging in folds of shade from her breasts, quivering! I felt my chest expand and my eyes widen. I was just about to look away, reckoning that I had gazed to the limits of decency, when that shaven-sided, crop-haired head swivelled and lowered, her calm face turning this way. I saw those eyes, shaded by her thick and shockingly black brows, blink slowly; she looked at me.

  Small smile, and those diamond eyes piercing, marking me.

  Then the gaze removed, refixed, directed somewhere else, once more facing the front. My neck felt un-oiled as I turned away, blasted and raddled by the urge of that directed consideration.

  Verity Walker. Eating my heart out. Consuming my soul.

  * * *

  "And dad's mole?"

  "Here," Grandma Margot said, tapping her left shoulder. She laughed a little as we went along the path between the shore and the trees. "That one itches fairly often."

  "And mine?" I asked, plodding after the wheelchair. I'd taken my biker's jacket off and it lay now on my gran's lap.

  She looked up at me, her expression unreadable. "Here." She patted her tummy, looked forward again. "Pivotal, wouldn't you say, Prentice?"

  "Ha," I said, still trying to sound non-committal. "Could be. What about Uncle Hamish? Where's he at?"

  "Knee," she said, tapping the plaster on her leg.

  "How is your leg, gran?"

  "Fine," she said tetchily. "Plaster comes off next week. Can't happen soon enough."

  The wheels of the chair sighed through the grass on either side of the narrow path. I remembered something I'd been meaning to ask.

  "What were you doing up that tree anyway, gran?"

  "Trying to saw a branch off."

  "What for?"

  "To stop those damn squirrels using it as a diving board to get to my bird table, that's what for." She used her stick to whack a crumpled drinking-yoghurt bottle off the path and into the water.

  "You could have asked somebody else."

  "I'm not totally incapable, Prentice. I'd have been all right if that hoodie hadn't started dive-bombing me; ungrateful wretch."

  "Oh, it was a bird's fault, was it?" I had a mental picture of some beetle-eyed carrion crow swooping on my gran, knocking her off her ladder. Maybe it had seen The Omen.

  "Yes, it was." Grandma Margot twisted in her wheelchair and raised both her stick and her voice, "And a few years ago I'd only have been bruised, as well. Brittle bones are one of the things that make getting old such a damn nuisance, too, especially if you're a woman." She nodded brusquely. "So think yourself lucky."

  "Okay," I smiled.

  "Damn birds," she muttered, glaring at a stand of ash trees on the edge of the plantation with such severity that I half expected to hear a parliament of crows cry out in answer. "Ach well," she shrugged. "Let's head back to the house; I need to go."

  "Right you are," I said, and wheeled the chair around. Grandma Margot lit another cigarette.

  "That branch is still ther
e, by the way."

  "I'll deal with it."

  "Good lad."

  A lark trilled, high overhead.

  I wheeled my gran back along the path by the water, over the main road and up the gravel drive, through the sunlit cobbled courtyard towards the tall house with the crow-stepped gables.

  I cut the offending branch down that afternoon, before I went back to Gallanach, to my Uncle Hamish's house, for tea. My dad arrived while I was up the ladder, sawing away at the sappy oak and swatting at flies. He stopped and looked at me when he got out of the Audi, then he disappeared into the house. I kept on sawing.

  * * *

  My great-great-great grandfather, Stewart McHoan, was buried in a coffin made from black glass by the craftsmen he had commanded in his capacity as manager of the Gallanach Glass Works (a post now filled by my Uncle Hamish). Grandma Margot had gone for the more conventional wooden model; it slid away into the wall as Bach's Mass reached one of its choral climaxes. A wood-fronted door slid back up to block the hole the coffin had disappeared into, then a little purple curtain lowered itself over the doorway.

  The head honcho of the undertakers supervised us as we all formed up for what was obviously the important and formal business of Leaving The Chapel. My father and mother left first. "I told you we sat in the wrong place, Tone," I heard my Uncle Hamish whisper behind me. (Aunt Tone just went "Ssh!)

  Outside it was a calmly sombre day, chill and a little damp. I could smell leaves being burned somewhere. The view down the crematorium's birch-lined drive led towards the town and the ocean. In the distance, through the haze, North Jura was dark pastel and flat-looking on the unruffled grey blanket of sea. I looked around; dark-dressed people were everywhere amongst the parked cars, talking quietly. Their breath rose in clouds through the still air. Uncle Hamish was talking to the lawyer Blawke; Aunt Antonia to my mother. Dad was with the Urvills. The wonderful Verity was mostly hidden by my father, her snow-white ski jacket in eclipse behind the old man's tweed coat. I considered shifting my position so I could see her properly, but decided against it; somebody might notice.

  At least, I thought brightly, she was here alone. For the last two years that I'd been worshipping Verity from afar she'd been going out with a gorm-free creature called Rodney Ritchie; his parents owned Ritchie's Reliable Removals in Edinburgh and were keen on alliteration. My father had met them once and coined a new collective noun: an embarrassment of Ritchies.

  Anyway, Urvill family gossip had it that Verity might be coming to her senses regarding Rodney's removal, and it was a positive and encouraging sign that she had turned up here without the geek in tow. I thought about approaching her. Maybe when we got back to the castle.

  I also thought about talking to James, but little brother was leaning against the crematorium wall looking bored but cool in his borrowed great-coat, earplugs in, getting his Walkman fix at last. Still mainlining The Doors, probably. For a moment I almost missed my elder brother, Lewis, who hadn't been able to make it back for the funeral. Lewis is better-looking, smarter and wittier than I am, so I don't miss him often.

  I was standing beside Uncle Hamish's Jaguar. Maybe I should just get into the car. Or find somebody else to talk to. I could feel that an attack of awkwardness — the kind of episode I am unhappily prone to — was imminent.

  "Hi, Prentice. You okay?"

  The voice was deep and throaty but female. Ashley Watt strolled up, put her hand on the side of my shoulder, patting. Her brother Dean was just behind. I nodded.

  "Yeah. Yeah; fine. How's yourself? Hi, Dean."

  "Hi, man."

  "You just back for this?" Ash asked, nodding her head at the low grey granite of the crematorium buildings. Her long fawn hair was gathered up; her strong, angular face, dominated by a blade of a nose and a pair of large round-lensed glasses, was concerned and sad. Ash was my age, but she always made me feel younger.

  "Yeah; back to Glasgow on Monday." I looked down. "Wow, Ash; I don't think I've ever seen you in a skirt before." Ash always wore jeans. We'd known each other since we'd used to crawl around on the same carpets together, but I couldn't remember seeing her in anything else but jeans. Yet there were her legs all right; pretty good-looking ones too, under a knee-length black skirt. She wore a big naval-looking jacket with the cuffs turned over, and black gloves; medium-high heels made her the same height as me.

  She grinned. "Short memory, Prentice. Recall school?"

  "Oh, yeah," I nodded, still looking at the legs. "Apart from then, though." I shrugged, smiled warily at her. I'd gone through a protracted Unbearable stage while I'd been at high school — it had lasted from my first day through to about fourth year — and the most vivid memory I had of Ash from that time was when I and her two brothers had carried out a highly successful snowball ambush on her, her sister and their pals as they'd walked back from school one dark evening. Somebody's snowball had broken that long sharp nose of Ashley's, and I suspected it had been one of mine if for no other reason than because as far as I knew nobody else had been deploying snowballs whose ballistic properties had been enhanced by the judicious reinforcement of their cores with moderately sizeable chuckie stones.

  Her nose had been reset, of course, and we'd got on better since we'd each left school. Ash frowned a little, her slightly magnified grey eyes searching mine.

  "I was sorry to hear about the old lady. All of us were." She swivelled briefly to Dean, standing lighting up a Regal behind her. He nodded; black jeans and a dark blue crombie that looked like it had seen better decades.

  I wasn't sure what to say. "I'll miss her," I said eventually. I'd been trying not to think about it, ever since I'd heard the news.

  "Was it a heart attack, aye, Prentice?" Dean inquired through his cloud of smoke,

  "No," I said. "She fell off a ladder."

  "I thought she did that last year," Ash said.

  "She did; off a tree. This time she was clearing the gutters. The ladder slipped and she went through the conservatory roof. She was dead by the time they got her to the hospital. Shock from blood-loss, apparently."

  "Oh, Prentice, I'm sorry," Ash said, and put her hand on my arm.

  Dean shook his head and looked mystified. "Ah thought she had a heart attack."

  "She did have one," I nodded. "About five years ago; got a pacemaker fitted."

  "Maybe she had a heart attack while she was up the ladder," Dean suggested. Ash kicked his shin. "Oo-ya!" he said.

  "Excuse Mr Sensitivity here," Ash said. "But like I said: we were all really sorry to hear, Prentice." She looked around. "Haven't seen Lewis here; could he not make it?"

  "He's in Australia," I sighed. "Being funny."

  "Ah." Ash nodded, smiling faintly. "Well, that's a shame."

  "For the Australians, perhaps," I said.

  Ash looked sad, even pitying. "Aw, Prentice —»

  Dean prodded his sister in the back with the hand he wasn't rubbing his shin with. "Hoi; what was that about yon guy ye bumped into in that Jacuzzi in Berlin? Said ye were goantae tell —»

  "Oh yeah… " Ash turned from frowning at her brother to frowning at me, took a breath, then let it out. "Hey; you fancy a pint later, Prentice?"

  "Well, maybe," I said. "I think we're ordered up to the castle for drinks and a bite to eat." I shrugged. "This evening?"

  "Okie-dokie," Ash nodded.

  "A jacuzzi? I asked, looking at Dean and Ash in turn. "Berlin?"

  Dean grinned broadly and nodded.

  Ash said, "Aye, Prentice; watchin the wa" come doon. And a shocking and decadent tale it is, too, let me tell you. See you in the Jacobite about eight?"

  "Right you are," I said. I leaned close and nudged her. "What Jacuzzi?"

  I saw the expression on Dean's face, then heard the noise, then watched Ashley's gaze rise from my face to fasten somewhere over my left shoulder. I turned slowly.

  The car came screaming up the crematorium drive, leaves swirling into the air behind. It was a green Rover
, and it had to be doing sixty. Probably exceeding the previous speed record within the crematorium grounds by a factor of at least three. It was heading more or less straight for us, and braking distance was running out fast.

  "That no Doctor Fyfe's car?" Dean said, as Ash grabbed my sleeve and started to pull me back, at the same time as the Rover's engine note fell from its wail, its nose dipped and the rear end wavered as the tyres tried to bite the moist tarmac.

  "I thought he had an Orion," I said, as Ashley pulled Dean and me past the rear of Uncle Hamish's car and onto the grass. Everybody in the crowd outside the crematorium was watching the green 216 as it skidded to a stop, avoiding a head-on collision with the Urvill's Bentley Eight by only a few centimetres. The tyres rasped on the tarmac. Doctor Fyfe — for indeed, that was who it was — jumped out of the driver's seat. He was as small, rotund and be-whiskered as ever, but today his face was red and his eyes were staring.

  "Stop!" he yelled, slamming the door and running for the chapel entrance as fast as his little legs would carry him. "Stop!" he shouted again; a little unnecessarily, I thought, as everybody had quite entirely stopped whatever they'd been doing some time before his car had even begun braking. "Stop!"

  I still insist that I heard a muffled crump at this point, but nobody believes me. That was when it happened, though.

  The sensitive morticians who run the Gallanach Corporation Crematorium usually wait until night before they burn the bodies, to avoid the possibility of resulting smoke-plumes sending overwrought relations into unsightly paroxysms of grief, but Grandma Margot had specified that she wanted to be incinerated immediately; her cremation was therefore genuinely under way as we stood there.

  "Ah!" said Doctor Fyfe, stumbling just before he was intercepted before the door of the chapel by a concerned undertaker. "Ah!" he said again, and crumpled, first into the undertaker's arms and then to the ground. He was on his knees briefly, then turned and sat down, clutched at his chest, stared at the granite flagstones outside the chapel, and to the assembled, still stunned and quieted crowd of us announced, "I'm sorry, folks, but I believe I'm having a coronary… " and keeled over on his back.