The Crow Road

by Iain Banks

  I nodded wisely. "Yeah, right enough."

  We sat there, silent for a while. I looked at Jimmy Turrock's spotty, open-mouthed face and his wispy red hair. His snores sounded like somebody forever trying to start a badly-tuned buzz-saw. I listened to it for a while, and watched a couple of flies buzzing around in a tight but complicated holding pattern in front of his mouth, as though daring each other to be the first to investigate inside. After a while they broke off, though, and settled for exploring the rough landscape of Jimmy's checked shirt. My head hurt. Come to that, almost everything hurt. Ah well, self-inflicted wounds.

  Jimmy Turrock snored on, oblivious.

  * * *

  Lewis and Verity had arrived the night before, an hour after I'd got back from my sunset visit to Darren's sea-side sculpture. Their plane had been late and they'd had problems hiring the car, so they arrived nearly two hours later than we'd expected. Rather than phone from the airport, Lewis had hired a mobile along with the car but then when they'd tried to use it, it hadn't worked. The upshot was that mum and I had been getting into a fine panic, and I'd been dreading watching the news: "… and we're just getting reports of an incident at Glasgow airport… details still coming in…»

  I mean, statistics tell you family tragedies oughtn't to come in quite such close succession, but Jeez; it gets to you, when somebody dies as unexpectedly as dad. Suddenly everybody you know seems vulnerable, and you fear for them all. Every phone-call sends your heart racing, every car journey anyone takes you want to say, Oh God be careful don't go above second gear have you thought of fitting air-bags is your journey really necessary be careful be careful be careful… So there we were; mum and I sitting watching the television, on the couch together, side by side, holding hands tightly without even realising it and watching the television but not taking in what we were watching, and dreading the sound of the phone and waiting waiting waiting for the sound of a car coming up the drive.

  Until I heard it, and leapt over the couch and hauled open the curtains and the car drew up and Lewis waved at me as he got out and I whooped, "It's them!" to my mum, who smiled and relaxed and looked suddenly beautiful again.

  There was a big three-cornered hug in the hall; then mum saw Verity standing by the door, taking a very long deliberate time to take her jacket off and hang it up; and so she was brought into the scrum too, and that was the first time, I realised, that I'd ever actually embraced her, even if it was just one arm round her slim shoulders. It was all right.

  Then the phone rang. Mum and I jumped.

  I got it. Mum took Lewis and Verity into the lounge.

  "Hello?"

  "Hello!" shouted a voice of immodestly robust proportions. "To whom am I talking?" the booming voice demanded. It was Aunt Ilsa. We'd left a message at the only contact address we had for her, two days earlier. She was in Ladakh, a place so out of the way it would take several international airports, a major rail terminus and substantial investment in a network ot eight-lane highways to promote it to the status of being in the middle of nowhere.

  "It's Prentice, Aunt Ilsa." There was a satellite delay. I was talking to what I suspected was the only satellite ground station between Islamabad and Ulaan Baatar. There was a lot of noise in the background; it sounded like people shouting, and a mule or something.

  "Hello there, Prentice," Aunt Ilsa bellowed. "How are you? Why did you want me to call?" Perhaps, I thought, she'd been taking steroids and they'd all gone to her vocal chords.

  "I'm… there's —»

  " — ello?"

  " — some bad news, I'm afraid."

  "What? You'll have to speak up, my dear; the hotelier is proving refractory."

  "It's dad," I said, thinking I might as well get this over with as quickly as possible. "Kenneth; your brother. I'm afraid he's dead. He died three days ago."

  "Good God! What on earth happened?" Aunt Ilsa rumbled. I could hear shouting. The thing that sounded like a mule went into what appeared to be a fit of coughing. "Mr Gibbon!" roared Aunt Ilsa. "Will you control that fellow!"

  "He was struck by lightning," I said.

  "Lightning?" Aunt Ilsa thundered.

  "Yes."

  "Good God. Where was he? Was he on a boat? Or —»

  "He was —»

  " — golf course? Mr… hello? Mr Gibbon had a friend once who was struck by lightning on a golf course, in Marbella. Right at the top of his back-swing. Bu —»

  "No; he was —»

  " — course it was an iron."

  " — climbing," I said.

  " — number seven, I think. What?"

  "He was climbing," I shouted. I could hear what sounded like a fight going on at the other end of the phone. "Climbing a church."

  "A church?" Aunt Ilsa demanded.

  "I'm afraid so. Listen, Aunt Ilsa —»

  "But he wouldn't be seen dead near a church!"

  I bared my teeth at the phone and growled. My aunt, the unconscious humorist.

  "I'm afraid that's what happened," I said as evenly as I could. "The funeral is tomorrow. I don't suppose you can make it, can you?"

  There was a noise of some Ladakhian confusion for a while, then, fortissimo; "I'll have to leave you now, Lewis —»

  "Prentice," I breathed through gritted teeth.

  "— Our yak has escaped. Tell your mother our thoughts are with her at —»

  And it was goodbye downlink.

  I looked at the phone. "I'm not sure you have any to spare, aunt," I said, and put the phone down with a feeling of relief.

  "I need a drink," I said to myself. I strode purposefully towards the lounge.

  * * *

  Lewis had been marginally more sensible than me, later on, that night before the funeral; he'd gone to bed one whisky before I had, leaving me in the lounge alone, at about three in the morning.

  I should have gone then too, but I didn't, so I was left to get morose and self-pitying, re-living another evening in this room, another whisky-connected two-some over a year earlier.

  "But it's not fair!"

  "Prentice, —»

  "And don't tell me life isn't fair!"

  "Aw, think, son," dad said, sitting forward in his seat, clutching his glass with both hands. His eyes fixed on mine; I looked down, glaring at his reflection on the glass-topped coffee table between us. "Fairness is something we made up," he said. "It's an idea. The universe isn't fair or unfair; it works by mathematics, physics, chemistry, biochemistry… Things happen; it takes a mind to come along and call them fair or not."

  "And that's it, is it?" I said bitterly. "He just dies and there's nothing else?" I could feel myself quivering with emotion. I was trying hard not to cry.

  "There's whatever he left behind; art, in Darren's case. That's more than most get. And there's how people remember him. And there might have been children —»

  "Not very likely in Darren's case, was it?" I sneered, grabbing at any opportunity to score even the smallest rhetorical point over my father.

  Dad shrugged, staring into his whisky. "Even so." He drank, looked at me over the top of the tumbler. "But the rest," he said, "is just cells, molecules, atoms. Once the electricity, the chemistry, stops working in your brain, that's it; no more. You're history."

  "That's defeatist! That's small-minded!"

  He shook his head. "No. What you're proposing is," he said, slurring his words a little. He pointed one finger at me. "You're too frightened to admit how big everything else is, what the scales of the universe are, compared to ours; distance and time. You can't accept that individually, we're microscopic; here for an eye-blink. Might be heading for better things, but no guarantees. Trouble is, people can't believe they're not the centre of things, so they come up with all these pathetic stories about God and life after death and life before birth, but that's cowardice. Sheer cowardice. And because it's the product of cowardice, it promotes it; 'The Lord is my shepherd'. Thanks a fucking lot. So we've to live like sheep. Cowardice and cruelty. But every
thing's okay, because we're doing the Lord's work. Fuck the silicosis, get down that mine and work, nigger! Aw shucks; sure we skinned her alive and threw her in the salt pans, but we were only doing it to save her soul. Lordy lordy, gimme that old time religion and original sin. Another baby for perdition… Shit; original sin? What sick fuckwit thought that one up?"

  Dad drained his glass and put it down on the glass-topped table between us. "Feel sorry for yourself because your friend's dead if you want, Prentice," he said, suddenly calm and sober. "But don't try to dignify it with what's supposed to be metaphysical angst; it's also known as superstitious shit, and you weren't brought up to speak that language."

  "Well, thanks for the fucking censorship, dad!" I yelled. I jumped up and slammed my own glass down. The table top cracked; a single big flaw crossed, deep and green and not quite straight, like a dull ribbon of silk somehow suddenly embedded in the thick glass, from one edge of the table to the other, almost underneath our tumblers.

  Dad stared at it then snorted, chuckling. "Hey, yeah! A symbol." He shook his head, glum, muttering as he sat back: "Hate the fuckers."

  I hesitated, looking at the cracked glass, instinct — or training — telling me to apologise, but then did what I'd intended to do, and set about storming out of the room.

  "Just fuck off, dad," I said before I slammed the door.

  He looked up, pursed his lips and nodded, as though I'd asked him to remember and put the lights out before he went to bed. "Yup; okay." He waved one hand. "Night."

  I lay in bed seething, thinking of all the smart things I should have said, until I fell into a troubled sleep. I woke early and left before anybody else was up, driving my hangover back to Glasgow and shouting at caravans that got in my way, and that was the last meaningful, full and frank exchange of views with my dad that I ever had.

  * * *

  "I wish he hadn't died right now," I said. I didn't look at Lewis. I was still looking at Jimmy Turrock, asleep against the wheel of his council digger. "I wish I could — I wish we could have started talking again." One of the two flies exploring the cotton landscape of Jimmy's shirt suddenly buzzed up to his forehead. His snoring hesitated, then went on. "It was so stupid." I shook my head. "I was so stupid."

  "Yeah," Lewis said after a bit. "Well, that's just the way it is, Prentice. You weren't to know." I heard Lewis sigh. There was something I wish I'd told him, too. Could have said, over the phone, end of last week."

  I looked at Lewis. "Oh yeah?"

  Lewis looked awkward. He crossed his arms and sucked at his bottom lip. He glanced at me. "Were you really that… you know; keen on Verity? I mean; are you?"

  I kicked my heels against the sides of the grave, checked out a couple of tree roots we'd have to tackle before we could dig much deeper. I shrugged. "Ah, it was just infatuation, I suppose. I mean, you know, I'll always like her, but… all that stuff at New Year… that was… well, partly the drink, but… mostly just sibling rivalry; sibling jealousy," I said. We both grinned. He still looked awkward. This time, instead of sucking his bottom lip, he bit his top one.

  I knew, just like that.

  "You are getting married," I said, gulping.

  Lewis looked at me with wide eyes. "She's pregnant?" I spluttered, contralto.

  Lewis's mouth was hanging open. He shut it quickly. He wiped his face with the hanky; his eyebrows and eyes registered surprise.

  "Um, both," he said. "Almost certainly." He rung the hanky out over the hole, but it didn't drip (still, though, we would leave a fair amount of sweat in our father's grave).

  Lewis nodded and his smile was flickering, uncertain. I hadn't seen him look so unsure of himself since the time when he was sixteen and I almost had him convinced the Boxer Rebellion had been about underpants.

  "Fooof," I said.

  Seemed as appropriate as anything. I stared over at Jimmy Turrock, blinking.

  Lewis was making a clicking noise with his mouth. He cleared his throat. "Wasn't exactly planned, to tell the truth, but… well; I mean, we both, you know; want it, so… And, well, you know how I feel about marriage and all that stuff, but… Fuck it, it just keeps things simple."

  He sounded almost apologetic.

  I shook my head and, turning to him with a big smile, I said, "You total bastard." I put my hands on my hips. He looked concerned, but I guess my grin must have looked sincere. "You total, complete and utter bastard; I hate you," I told him. "But I hope you're disgustingly happy." I hesitated, just a little, then I hugged him. "Obscenely happy," I said. Probably have cried but I was pretty cried out by that stage.

  "Man." He breathed into my shoulder. "I didn't know how you'd take it."

  "In the neck," I said, pushing him away. "Told mum?"

  "Wanted to wait till after the funeral. Mind you, I was going to wait till then to tell you, too, so maybe Verity's spilling the beans right now."

  "So when's the big event?"

  "Which one?" Lewis smiled; embarrassed, I do believe. He shrugged. "We thought October, and the sprog thinks March."

  I let out a long, shuddering sigh, head feeling a bit swimmy. "Marriage, eh?" I said, shaking my head again. I looked him down and up, hoisted one brow. "Think you'll take to it?"

  Lewis grinned. "Like a lemming to water."

  I laughed. Eventually I laughed so loudly I woke Jimmy Turrock, who looked at me — sitting on the edge of my father's grave on the day of his burial, guffawing away fit to wake the living — with undisguised horror.

  Like a lemming to water. Lewis knew as well as I did the maligned little buggers are perfectly good swimmers.

  * * *

  James arrived back about mid-day. He was… well, pretty distressed, and all the fragile defences mum, Lewis and I had been constructing for the past few days — Lewis and I joking, mum staying quiet and keeping busy — crumbled. James seemed to blame dad, blame us; blame everybody. He was ugly with anger and he was like a racing outboard in the calm little pond we'd been trying to create; the house felt hellish and we all started snapping at each other. Outside, at the back of the garden, we could hear the council digger, excavating the rest of the hole. The engine revved up and down; it sounded like a machine snoring. James wished us all dead and ran up to his room and slammed the door. It was a relief to get back out to the grave and help Jimmy Turrock apply the finishing touches.

  Then it was time to get showered and changed and wait for the hearse and the mourners. The funeral was suitably grim, despite the sunshine and the warm breeze. The words Lewis said over the grave sounded awkward and forced. Mum looked white as paper. James stood, mouth twisted, furious; he stalked off the instant the coffin touched the bottom of the grave. I threw some earth down onto the pale wood of the lid, putting back a little of what I'd helped dig out.

  But it passed, and the people who came — a good hundred or more — were kind. We were busy in the house afterwards, feeding and watering them, and then that passed too.

  * * *

  My big brother and his intended asked me to be their best man the day after dad's funeral. I'd slept, fitfully, on the idea, but finally said yes. It had already been agreed between the two families that the wedding would be held at Lochgair. Lewis and Verity stayed another day after that, then left to go back to London so that Lewis could resume his gigs. He was almost ashamed when I saw him next, when he confessed that nobody thought his delivery had altered a bit; he was just the same on stage after dad's death as he had been before. The only thing he changed was that he stopped telling the joke about the uncle that dies in an avalanche on a dry ski-slope.

  I told him not to worry about it; you had to be a different person on stage. The person he was up there would only change if he told a story about dad dying. Maybe a routine based on the idea of an atheist getting struck by lightning while climbing a church tower would be therapeutic for him, one day.

  Lewis had the decency to be appalled at the idea.

  Mum and I went through dad's papers, and were abl
e, after Ashley's tuition, to work the computer and access the information it held.

  Dad's will, which had been written at the time of Grandma Margot's death, had turned up in the strongbox hidden under the study floorboards. The strongbox had been no big secret; we all knew about it. It was just something to make any burglar's job more difficult. Mum had already seen the will when she had opened the strongbox the morning after dad's death, in the company of one of her friends from the village. She had only looked at the first paragraph, which confirmed that dad wanted to be buried in the grounds of the house. She'd been too upset to look at any more of it, and had put the will back under the floor.

  So we opened the strongbox again, divided the papers, took a desk each, and looked at what we had. Mum had given the pile with the will in it to me. I read it first, and my heart sank after I'd scanned quickly through it and got to the end.

  "Oh no," I said.

  "What's wrong?" she asked from the main desk in front of the window.

  "It's the will," I said, turning it over, looking at the last part again, looking over the page but still failing to find what I was looking for. "It hasn't been witnessed or anything."

  Mum came over and stood behind me. She took the four handwritten sheets from me, frowning. Her skin was pale and her eyes looked dark. She wore black jeans and a dark blue shirt and her hair was tied back with a piece of blue ribbon. She handed the will back to me. "I think it's all right," she said slowly. She nodded. "I'll call Blawke to make sure. He'll need to look at it anyway." She nodded again, walked back to sit in her seat and started reading through the papers she had in front of her. Then she looked up at me. "You phone him, would you?"

  "All right," I said and watched her bend to the papers again. She appeared to read for a few moments; I almost wanted to laugh, she seemed so unconcerned. She looked up again after a few seconds and just sat there, looking out through the open velvet curtains at the back lawn.

  She sat like that for a full two minutes, unmoving, face unreadable. I smiled; I wanted to weep, to laugh. Eventually I said softly, "Mum?"