The Crow Road

by Iain Banks

  "That better?" Lewis inquired.

  "Mm-hum," Verity nodded.

  Meanwhile I was fainting in the back seat, just thinking of what that tight black mid-thigh skirt concealed.

  It had taken until the long, open left-hander that leads down into Glen Kinglas before my erection had finally subsided, and that had been mostly naked fear; Verity had lost it just for a second, the rear of the car nudging out towards the wrong side of the road as we whanged round the bend. Sitting in the rear, maybe it had felt worse, but I'd been petrified. Thankfully, there'd been no traffic coming; the concept of striking up an intimate — indeed potentially penetrative — relationship with the rocks on the far side of the road had been bad enough; but even the prospect of a head-on with another lump of metal travelling at anything remotely like the sort of speed we were sustaining might have resulted in me making my mark in the most embarrassing fashion on the leather upholstery of the Bavarian macht-wagen.

  Verity just went "Whoa-yeah!" like she'd accomplished something, jiggled the steering wheel once and accelerated cleanly away.

  Anyway, it's one of the minor unfortunate facts of life that a detumescing willy is prone to trap stray pube hairs under the foreskin as it scrolls forward again, and that was why I was adjusting my clothing as we braked for the bend above Cairndow.

  I opened the Crow Road folder lying on my lap and leafed through some of the papers. I'd read the various bits and pieces a couple of times now, looking for something deep and mysterious in it all but not finding anything; I'd even done a little research of my own, and discovered through mum that dad had some more of Rory's papers in his study; she'd promised she'd try and look them out for me. I took a sheet of paper out of the folder and held the page of scribbled, multi-coloured notes up, resting it on one raised knee, gazing at it with a critical look, wondering if Verity could see what I was doing. I cleared my throat. I'd rather been hoping Lewis or Verity might have asked me what the file contained by now, and what I was doing, but — annoyingly — neither of them had.

  "Sounds?" Lewis asked.

  "Sounds." Verity nodded.

  I sighed. I put the sheet back in the folder and the folder back on the other rear seat.

  We rounded the top of Upper Loch Fyne listening to an old Madonna tape, the Material Girl singing "Papa Don't Preach," which raised a smile from me, at least.

  … Back to Gallanach, for Christmas and Hogmanay. I felt a strange mixture of hope and melancholy. The lights of on-coming cars glared in the dull day. I watched the lights and the drizzle and the grey, pervasive clouds, remembering another car journey, the year before.

  "Sounds daft to me, Prentice," Ashley said, lighting another cigarette.

  "It sounds daft to me," I agreed. I watched the red tip of her cigarette glow; white headlights streamed by on the other side of the motorway, as we headed north in the darkness.

  Darren had been dead a couple of months; I had fallen out with my father and I'd been in London for most of the summer, staying with Aunt Ilsa and her long-term companion, whose only name appeared to be Mr Gibbon, which I thought made him sound like a cat for some reason… Anyway, I'd been staying with them in darkest Kensington, at Mr Gibbon's very grand, three-storeyed town-house in Ascot Square, just off Addison Road, and working at a branch of Mondo-Food on Victoria Street (they were trying a new line in Haggisburgers at the time and the manager thought my accent would help shift them. Only trouble was, when people said, "Gee, what's in these?" I kept telling them. I don't believe they're on the menu any more). I'd saved some money, grown heartily sick of London, fast food and maybe people, too, and I was getting out.

  Ash had been in London for a programming interview with some big insurance company and had offered me a lift back home, or to Gallanach anyway, as I'd exiled myself from Lochgair. Her battered, motley-panelled 2CV had looked out of place in Ascot Square, where I think that anything less than a two-year old Golf GTi, Peugeot 209 or Renault 5 was considered to be only just above banger status, even as a third car, let alone a second.

  "Sorry I'm late, Prentice," she'd said, and kissed my cheek. She and Lewis had been out for a meal the night before. Big brother was staying in Islington, making a living from TV comedy shows by being one of the twenty or so names that zip up the screen under where it says Additional Material By:, and trying to be a stand-up comic. I'd been invited to dinner too, but declined.

  I'd hoped she'd just pick me up and we'd be on our way, but Ash hadn't seen Aunt Ilsa for a long time and insisted on exchanging more than just pleasantries with her and Mr G.

  * * *

  Aunt Ilsa was a large, loud woman of forbiddingly intense bonhomie; I always thought of her as being the most remote outpost of the McHoan clan (unless you counted the still purportedly peripatetic Uncle Rory); a stout bulwark of a woman who — for me at least — had always personified the dishevelled ramifications of our family. A couple of years older than dad, she had lived in London for three decades, on and off. Mostly, she was off; travelling the world with Mr Gibbon, her constant companion for twenty-nine of those thirty years. Mr Gibbon had been an industrialist whose firm had employed the ad agency which Aunt Ilsa had worked for when she'd first moved to London.

  They met; he found her company agreeable, she found him a new slogan. Within a year they were living together and he had sold his factory to devote more time to the rather more demanding business of keeping Aunt Ilsa company on her peregrinations; they had been on the move more or less ever since.

  Mr Gibbon was a grey-haired pixie of a man, ten years older than Aunt Ilsa, and as tiny and delicate as she was tall and big-boned. Apparently he was quite charming, but as the basis of his charm seemed to rest upon the un-startling stratagem of addressing every female he encountered by the fullest possible version of her name (so that every Julie became a Juliana, every Dot extended to a Dorothea, all Marys became Mariana, Sues Susanna, etc. Sorry; etcetera) as well as the slightly perverse habit of calling all young girls «madam» and all old women "girls," it was a charm to which I at least was quite prophylactically immune.

  "And you are…?" he asked Ashley as he welcomed her in the hallway.

  "Ash," she said. "Pleased to meet you."

  I grinned, thinking Mr Gibbon would have a hard job finding a convincing embellishment for Ash's uncommon monicker.

  "Ashkenazia! Come in! Come in!" He led the way to the library.

  Ash turned back to me as we followed, and muttered, "He's a pianist, isn't he?"

  Totally misunderstanding what she meant, I sneered slightly at Mr Gibbon's back, and nodded. "Yeah; isn't he just."

  Aunt Ilsa was in the library; she had a heavy cold at the time and I am tempted to say we discovered her poring over a map, but the inelegant truth is that she was searching the shelves for a misplaced book when we entered.

  She spent most of the next half hour or so talking about the extended holiday to Patagonia she was planning, in an extremely loud voice and with an enthusiasm that would probably have embarrassed the Argentinian Tourist Board. I sat fretting, wanting to be away.

  * * *

  By some miracle, the 2CV hadn't been towed away when I'd finally dragged Ash out; we'd made it to the M1, picked up a hitcher and — rather beyond the call of duty, I'd have said — dropped him where he was going, in Coventry. We got lost in Nuneaton trying to get back on the M6, and were now heading through Lancashire at dusk, still an hour or more from the border.

  "Prentice, there are a lot of better reasons for not talkin to your dad, believe me."

  "I believe you," I said.

  "What about your mother?"

  "No, she's still talking to him."

  She tutted. "You know what I mean. You're still seeing her, I hope."

  "Yeah; she came to Uncle Hamish's a couple of times, and she drove me back to Glasgow once."

  "I mean, what's the big argument? Can't you just agree to disagree?"

  "No; we disagree about that." I shook my head. "Seriously; it
doesn't work that way; neither of us can leave it alone. There's almost nothing either of us can say that can't be taken the wrong way, with a bit of imagination. It's like being married."

  Ash laughed. "What would you know? I thought your mum and dad were pretty happy."

  "Yeah, I suppose. But you know what I mean; when a marriage or relationship is going wrong and it's like everything that one person says or doesn't say, or does or doesn't do, seems to rub the other one up the wrong way. Like that."

  "Hmm," Ash said.

  I watched the red tail lights. I felt very tired. "I think he's angry that having given me the freedom to think for myself, I've not followed him all down the line."

  "But, Prentice, it's not as though you even believe in Christianity or anything like that. Shit, I can't work out what it is you do believe in… God?"

  I shifted uncomfortably in the thin seat. "I don't know; not God, not as such, not as a man, something in human form, or even in an actual thing, just… just a field… a force —»

  "'Follow the Force, Luke, eh?" Ash grinned. "I remember you and your Star Wars. Didn't you write to Steven Spielberg?" She laughed.

  "George Lucas." I nodded miserably. "But I don't even mean anything like that; that was just background for the film. I mean a sort of interconnectedness; a field effect. I keep getting this feeling it's already there, like in quantum physics, where matter is mostly space, and space, even the vacuum, seethes with creation and annihilation all the time, and nothing is absolute, and two particles at opposite ends of the universe react together as soon as one's interfered with; all that stuff. It's like it's there and it's staring us in the face but I just can't… can't access it."

  "Maybe it isn't accessible," Ash said, fag in mouth, holding the steering wheel with her knees and making a stretching, circling motion with her shoulders (we were on a quiet stretch of motorway, thankfully). She took her cigarette from her mouth again, put her hands back on the wheel. I hoped she wasn't getting sleepy; the drone of the wee Citroen's engine was cataleptically monotonous.

  "How not?" I said. "Why shouldn't it be accessible?"

  "Maybe it's like your particle; inevitably uncertain. Soon as you understand one part of what it means, you lose any chance of understanding the rest." She looked over at me, brows furrowed. "What was that routine Lewis used to do? About Heisenberg?"

  "Oh," I said, annoyed now. "I can't remember."

  "Something about being at school and bursting into this office and saying, look, are you Principal here or not, Heisenberg? And him going, weellll… " She gave a small laugh. "Mind, it was funnier the way Lewis told it."

  "A little," I conceded. "But —»

  "Lewis seems to be making it in the old alternative comedy scene, doesn't he?" Ash said.

  "So we're told," I said, looking away. "I don't imagine Ben Elton or Robin Williams have considered early retiral quite yet, though."

  "Aye, but good for him, though, eh?"

  I looked at Ash. She was watching the road as we roared down a slight incline at all of seventy. Her face was expressionless; that long, Modigliani nose like a knife against the darkness. "Yeah," I said, and felt small and mean-spirited. "Aye, good for him."

  "It true you've not seen much of him in London?"

  "Well, he has his own friends, and I was usually too tired after work." (A lie; I wandered art galleries and went to films, mostly.) "And I couldn't have paid my way, either."

  "Ach, Prentice," Ashley said, chiding. She shook her head (the long mane of fair hair was tied up, so it did not swish and fall over her shoulders). "He'd have liked to have seen you more often. He's missed you."

  "Oh, well," I said.

  I watched the lights again for a while. Ashley drove and smoked. I felt myself nodding off, and shook myself awake. "Ah, dear… " I rubbed my face with both hands, asked, "How do you keep awake?"

  "I play games," she told me.

  "Oh yeah?"

  "Yeah," she nodded, licking her lips. "Like Name That Tail-Light."

  "What?" I laughed.

  "True," she said. "See that car up ahead?"

  I looked at the two red lights. "Yeah."

  "See how high up the lights are, not too far apart?"

  "Renault 5."

  "No kidding!"

  "Mm-hmm. One it's over-taking?"

  "Yeah?"

  "Horizontally divided lights; that's an old Cortina; mark 3."

  "Good grief."

  "Here's a Beemer. New five series, I think… about to pass us; should have lights that slant in slightly at the bottom."

  The BMW passed us; its rear lights were slanted in slightly, at the bottom. We overtook the old Ford and the 5 a little later.

  "Course," Ash said. "It's more fun in a fast car when you're doing all the overtaking, but even just sitting at seventy you'd be surprised how much you pass, sometimes. Now." She held up one finger. "Listen and feel as we pull back into the slow lane."

  Ash swung the ancient 2CV to the left, then straightened.

  "What?" I said.

  "Nothing." She grinned. "Missed all the cats" eyes. Bump-free lane-changing. A great skill, you know." She glanced at me, mock-serious. "Not so easy in a Ferrari, or whatever; the tyres are too wide. But skinny wee tyres like this thing's got are just about ideal."

  "Allow me to sit back in amazement, young Ashley," I said, crossing my arms and twisting in my seat to face her. "I had no idea it was possible to extract such multifarious enjoyment from a simple night-time car journey."

  Ashley laughed. "Cobbled streets are even more fun, if you're a girly."

  "Huh. Trust you to lower the tone of the whole conversation and introduce a note of clitoris envy at the same time."

  Ash laughed louder, ground the cigarette butt out in the ashtray, flipped it closed. "Och, it's a gift; I'd be ashamed of myself if I wasn't just so fucking nice with it." She put her head back an roared with laughter at this, before shaking her head and restoring her attention to the road. I laughed a little too, then stared out of the side window, wondering suddenly if Ash had slept with Lewis last night.

  She clicked the indicator on. "Ye Olde Motorway Services. Come on; yer Aunty Ashley'll buy you a coffee and a sticky bun."

  "Gee, you sure know how to show a boy a good time."

  Ash just smirked.

  * * *

  When I woke, about mid-day in the flat on Crow Road, Janice Rae had gone. To work, I assume. There was a note, on a small blue sheet of writing paper: "You're the better stand-up. Call me, sometime, if you want. J."

  I looked at that qualified second sentence with an odd feeling of sadness and relief.

  Drying off after a shower, I stood looking at two framed movie posters on the bathroom wall. Paris, Texas and Dangerous Liaisons.

  I had a coffee and some toast, washed up and let myself out. I'd put the Crow Road folder in a Tesco bag, and walked back to our flat under grey skies and through a mild and swirling wind, swinging the carrier to and fro, and whistling.

  Our flat was in Grant Street, near St George's Cross (and just off Ashley Street, funnily enough). My flat-mates were out when I got back, which was fine by me; I did not relish the prospect of facing the single-entendres that were Gav's best approximation of wit, and which inevitably followed any sexual adventure of mine or Norris's — real or imagined — Gav ever found out about. If I was lucky, Gav would be so shocked at the very idea I had had carnal knowledge of an aunt — even one of the not-really-an-aunt variety that he would just pretend it hadn't happened. Hell, if I was really lucky he might stop talking to me altogether, I thought… but that didn't seem likely. Or preferable, to be honest; part of me rather looked forward to such taunting. I'd caught a glimpse of my face in the hall mirror once, when Gav was berating me for such rakish tendencies, and I'd been smiling.

  I made myself another coffee, extended myself on the sofa — my legs quivery with fatigue — opened the folder, pulled out the sheets of paper and started to read.

 
Crow Road seemed to be the title of Uncle Rory's Big Idea. From the notes, he seemed unsure whether its final form would be a novel, a film, or an epic poem. There were even some pages discussing the possibility of it being a concept album. I lay there on the couch and shuddered at the very thought. So seventies.

  The material in the folder seemed to fall into three basic categories: notes, bits of descriptive prose, and poems. A few of the notes were dated, all between the early and late seventies. The notes were on a mixture of papers, mostly loose-leaf; ruled, plain, squared, graph. Some were on cartridge paper, some on pages torn from what looked like school exercise books, and some on folded, green-lined computer print-out. Napkins and old cigarette packets did not, sadly, put in an appearance. The notes were scribbled in a no-less motley variety of different-coloured pens (ball, felt and micro-liner) and used a lot of abbreviations and compressions: H crshd twn carige & tr? Erlier proph. by Sr: "kid by t. livng & t. ded((?)) H Chrst-lk figr (chng nm to start with T!!???); fml Chrst fr new times? Scot mrtyrf Or Birnam wd idea — disgsd army??? (2 silly?)… and that was one of the more comprehensible bits.

  2 silly, indeed.

  The prose was mostly about places Rory had been; they read like out-takes from his travel pieces. San José, Ca: Suddenly, the Winchester House itself seemed like a emblem for the restless American soul… about some weird house Rory wanted to use in his story, judging by some cryptic notes at the end of the passage.

  Then there was the poetry:

  … We know this life

  is merely a succession

  of endless brutal images,

  punctuated,

  for effect,

  by relative troughs

  whose gutsy heaves

  at first disguised